Nicola Dennis/Supplied
Archie Dennis looks at the humpback whale he spotted near his family’s farm at Warrington in Otago.
A family isolating due to Covid-19 had a whale of a find near their coastal Otago property on Friday.
Dr Nicola Dennis was walking near the coast that borders their small farm at Warrington – a 25-minute drive north of Dunedin – when her 7-year-old son, Archie, spotted something on the rocky shore.
“We were just entertaining ourselves in isolation and looking for a fault in an electric fence, so we followed it up a ridge, and he looked back and said ‘what is that?’”
“That” was the carcass of a humpback whale.
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Dennis said while they were surprised to find a whale washed-up in their backyard, they were aware that a dead whale had been spotted floating off the Warrington coast during the first week of the school holidays.
“We’ve visited it every day… it has been macabre.”
Dennis later measured the whale to be just under 10m long.
The access to the beach was difficult, so in preparation for a visit by representatives from the local Puketeraki rūnaka, who performed a karakia, and the Department of Conservation on Monday, the family constructed a stile out of scrap wood.
It was unknown how the whale died, Dennis said.
With a large storm anticipated to hit coastal Otago on Tuesday, it was expected the whale may return to the sea where sharks were known to frequent the waters.
“We’ve all had some fun with the whale… we can now return the whale to the sea.”
According to DOC, humpback whales are frequent visitors to the coastal waters of New Zealand.
They travel mainly along the east coast of the South Island and through Cook Strait during winter, and return along the west coast during spring.
Newborns measure between four and five metres, while adults can grow up to 15 metres.