This is something most of us can only dream of. Imagine: you are casually swimming in the ocean, when suddenly, a family of elegant and majestic marine mammals show up next to you, playing and joining you on your swim.
This is exactly what happened to not one, but two swimmers off the coast of New Zealand: the latter were joined in the water by families of orcas (or killer whales, Orcinus Orca ).
Photographer Dylan Brayshaw shot a video on Hahei Beach, New Zealand, where he recounts seeing a swimmer heading towards a group of three orcas, who began to swim around her. The swimmer quickly got out of the water to recover from her shock and collected herself, then got back into the water, that’s when Brayshaw commenced filming the event.
The video is breathtaking: a small family of orcas, including two juveniles, settles calmly near the swimmer who trudges through the waters of the ocean.
In a statement to Australian television, the woman named Judie Johnson says at first, she thought they were dolphins, then later realized what they were. It was an exciting experience, especially when the adult orca and she came face to face.
Experts consulted by Next media clarified, one thing seems clear: the swimmer portrayed nerves of steel. “The killer whales went towards her and the surprising thing is that she took it easy and continued in the same direction,” says Javier Almunia, cetacean expert at the Loro Parque Foundation. “I would still be shaking.” “The mother is about four and a half meters or five meters,” says Renaud de Stephanis, head of the CIRCE Foundation that works with these animals in the Strait of Gibraltar. “I certainly wouldn’t go into the water with them .”
