Lure Of Rays Draws Orcas

Wednesday, January 7, 2009
PICTON, NEW ZEALAND - A pod of 12 orca have made themselves at home in Queen Charlotte Sound in the past two days, much to the delight of people on the water.

Co-owner of Dolphin Watch Ecotours Dan Engle said they were first seen in Tawa Bay in Endeavour Inlet late on Monday afternoon.

The pod consisted of two big males, lots of females and at least three calves that were awkward and clumsy, so they were probably born within the past month, he said. The group has moved throughout Queen Charlotte Sound since Monday night going into each little bay, possibly for a feed of stingray.

Mr Englehaupt said Dolphin Watch Ecotours had a boat full of people who were aiming to swim with dolphins, but the orca were purely for observation.

"You can't swim with orca - they eat things bigger than people," he said.

Mr Englehaupt and his wife Amy took photographs off Lochmara Bay of the mature orca's dorsal fins and the saddle, a whitish area behind the fins, to identify each animal. These will be sent to Ingrid Visser of the Orca Research Trust for further identification.

"A lot of times you can pick one out of a group that you know, but this time there were none I could identify off the top of my head," Mr Englehaupt said.

Ms Visser set up the first research project dedicated to orca in the South Pacific. She gathers information on individual orcas from around New Zealand, identifying them from photographs sent to her. People also send her their observations of orcas' behavioral patterns.

Mr Englehaupt went out on the water yesterday morning Jan 6 and said that when he left the pod at about 10.30am yesterday they were heading out of Queen Charlotte Sound. They could be on their way to Kaikoura, French Pass or Wellington.

RAY WARNING

Marlborough Sounds swimmers are being urged to be careful in shallow waters this summer, after several stingray encounters in the top of the South Island and the lower North Island.

Female stingrays are attracted to the sheltered, shallow waters of the Marlborough Sounds in summer to feed and give birth, says Nelson-based environmental consultant and former Department of Conservation coastal biological surveyor Rob Davidson.

Male stingrays usually follow, he says.

"In some of the Sounds' bays, they hang about in less than a foot (30 centimetres) of water. They look as if they're sunbathing."

However, stingrays did not hunt out people to hurt or attack, Mr Davidson says.

"They often doze in the shallows. An attack is an accidental thing. It's a frightened response."

The most common variety of ray seen in the Sounds is the eagle ray, he says.

According to the Auckland University Leigh Marine Laboratory website, adult eagle rays have a maximum wingspan of approximately 1.5 metres.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist Michael Manning says stingrays are more frightened of people than people are of them, and being stung is "just bad luck".

"But they have these barbs and they tend to flay them around when they're trying to get out of the way, and that can have consequences if it ends up in your leg," he says.

Last Friday, an 11-year-old girl suffered a deep cut to her arm and a cut leg in a suspected brush with a stingray in Wairarapa. Two other people were injured by stingrays last month one at Golden Bay and one on the Kapiti Coast.

The culprits were most likely to have been the common short-tail stingrays, which could grow to four metres in length and weigh up to 300 kilograms, Mr Manning says. Their large, serrated, venomous barbs could leave deep, painful wounds.

Stingray victims should wash their wounds with hot water and stop the bleeding with compression bandages.

Beach-goers should avoid stingrays if they see them, and "shuffle" their feet in murky shallows to ward them off, Mr Manning says. However, the chances of being attacked are low.

"These are wild animals that are going to react like a wild animal. If they feel threatened or vulnerable, they're going to want to clear out.'

Source: The Nelson Mail