Whale Of A Time! Judie's Lucky Dip!

It Was a Stroke of Luck for the Spritely Swimmer

- Lynley Ward

When long-standing swimmer Judie Johnson headed into the water for her usual Tuesday dip in a sheltered bay on the Coromandel Peninsula, there was little to indicate it would be anything out of the ordinary.

Had she known four orcas were submerged just beyond the breakers, she probably wouldn’t have kicked off her 2km swim to the southern end of the beach and back.

But on an overcast day last December, the Hahei woman plunged in, only to find herself joined part way through by three large creatures of the deep, suddenly swooping in from behind, diving under and weaving around her.

Remarkably, the magical encounter was captured by a drone buzzing high overhead and what it showed – an orca, her calf and another juvenile frolicking in the waves around the 68-year-old – was nothing short of sensational. Not surprisingly, within hours of hitting social media, it went viral.

“It’s blown me away to think that people would be interested,” she says. “I just love talking about it because even though I think people must be over it by now, they still come up to me.”

Judie says at first, she thought her ocean companion was a dolphin. “And then I saw the big white markings and realised it certainly wasn’t a dolphin but an orca!”