A French fisherman has had a close encounter with the largest animal in the world off Wellington’s west coast.
Matt Ringot was fishing between Mana Island and Mākara on Tuesday, when he spotted a blue whale breaching the surface.
“Suddenly we heard a big breath and our heads turned to see the back of the whale,” Ringot told 1news.
The whale then dived under the surface, so he turned off the engine of his vessel and put up his drone to try and capture it.
After five minutes he thought he had lost the whale, but then he caught a glimpse of something on the screen.
“I saw a white dot and saw she was coming up for another breath. My drone was quite high in the sky so I wouldn’t disturb her.”
Ringot says he did more research after the encounter to double check it was in fact a blue whale.
“We don’t have a lot of information about blue whales in New Zealand so I was extremely lucky. She must have been 15 metres. She was massive.”
While he has never seen a blue whale before, he says he sees dolphins all the time, most recently dusky dolphins along the same coastline.
“We have to preserve this beauty. I come from France and we don’t have the same beauty there. This is paradise and we must protect it.”
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