‘Chill out’ says dad as orca swims by

A group of young kayakers in Golden Bay reacted with shock and awe when an orca suddenly appeared.

Nelson painter Steve Halcrow captured the encounter on camera, showing an orca swimming around two of his sons and their friends on kayaks and a paddleboard.

As the large, black dorsal fin cuts through the water in Ligar Bay, one of the young paddlers calls out in alarm but Halcrow tells them to ‘‘chill out’’ .

The orca’s head emerged briefly from the water, before it swam between two of the kayaks in Ligar Bay.

Halcrow told them the orca was chasing a stingray. ‘‘That is unreal,’’ he said as it swam away.

Halcrow’s 13-year-old son, Luke, was on a paddleboard, and his other son Jude, 11, was on a kayak. Kayla Trotter, 13, and Dylan Trotter, 10, were also in kayaks.

Halcrow saw the orca around 3.30pm.

A couple of them had been seen around nearby Tata Beach before heading to Ligar Bay.

Halcrow was later told the orca had continued on to Po¯ hara beach.

He said Ligar Bay was very flat, making it a home for stingrays that orca loved to eat.

When the orca appeared near the children, he tried to exude ‘‘a bit of calmness’’.

He knew orca didn’t attack humans in the wild, only in captivity, and that it was chasing a stingray.

‘‘I was banking on that fact.’’ Halcrow said the experience was great, something no money could buy.

The experience left one of the young paddlers shaking and crying, but the others had a huge adrenaline rush and were ‘‘talking non-stop’’ about it, he said.

‘‘One of them kayaked so fast back to shore they could join an Olympic team next year.’’

‘‘One of them kayaked so fast back to shore they could join an Olympic team next year.’’ Steve Halcrow