Watch This Beautiful (& Terrifying) Drone Footage of a Swimmer Being Followed by a Trio of Orcas

Now this is really beautiful if more than a bit heart-stopping. In the incredible video below shot from above by a drone off the coast of New Zealand, you can see a trio of curious orcas (aka killer whales) closely follow a lone swimmer near to shore.

The group of orcas (also known as a pod), seems to have fun trailing and nearly grazing the swimmer as she freestyle swims along the beach. The footage was shot by Dylan Brayshaw on December 4th at Hahei Beach on the Coromandel peninsular of New Zealand.

Here’s what Brayshaw has to say about the incident on YouTube:

“I was watching a pod of orcas swimming up the beach, I saw a swimmer swimming along shore directly towards them, at this point I asked my partner to get my mobile phone as I wasn’t sure what would happen and I may have to call for help. The orcas circled her and she got quite the fright. She then got out the water as she was only 20m from shore. Some on lookers chatted to her about the experience and then to my surprise she got back into the water and swam back towards the pod, to I assume continue her training swim. I then launched the drone and filmed from a fair distance away making sure not to disturb the pod of orcas. What I witnessed was truly amazing.”

Truly amazing is right. It reminds us of another video we shared recently showing an orca swim casually by a man in a kayak. As we noted in that story, while they’re called killer whales, deadly incidents between orcas and humans in the wild are extremely rare.

You can learn the backstory to this video and see some additional footage here.

If you want some tips on how to shoot aerial images and video from a drone, check out our piece from yesterday with “7 Secrets to Crush Drone Photography.” 

Via Twisted Sifter

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