So, what am I blathering about? Well, basically I was in Auckland for the weekend, visiting an Orca friend of mine, when we heard about a RL Orca stranded! My friend was a Project Jonah volunteer, so we took off up there.
Basically I got to help rescue a young wild orca, and managed to sneak in a few gentle strokes too... :)
Here's the newspaper article from the New Zealand Herald, for June 16, 1997, page 3. Things they got wrong... well, when I arrived, there were about a dozen people there, half asleep, and there was about 4 of us who looked after the orca from then till dawn, when others started showing up.
It was pretty foggy, and I didn't get there till about 2. We were walking down the beach towards the lights in the distance, when a truck met us going the other way. It was the DOC officer, and they were adament that we weren't going down the beach, and took us back to the car. We were pretty annoyed, but couldn't do anything.
A bit later, we got a call, and thay came back, the had realised that they needed more people to look after the Orca, so they took us down there with some other people they had removed from the beach.
So we got there at nearly 3am, and I spent 2.5 hours recording each breath he took in a notebook. (abouty 1 minute 10, to one minute 30, btw) At 5:30 I needed a break, and let one of the women take over. Dawn was in an hour, so I just stayed up. People arrived slowly, and around 9am, low tide, we lifted him back to the water with a digger. Around 11 the tide had come in enough, and we floated him out, a boat towing him out past the breakers.
I was just watch from shore basically, with Terry who was taking pics. The orca took off basically, and was seen meeting an adult, and moving back to towards the pod, so we guess he's okay for now.
We drove back to Auckland, and arrived past 1pm. Slept till 6 or so, and got call from the Herald. We were both feeling too dead to drive to Hamilton, so I got him to let me stay the night, and we got the photos to the Herald.