Being camera-shy, Aull said they turned to avoid being filmed – only to be confronted with a “huge fin”.
“We’re at water level, so the fin is massive.
Whitianga resident Andrea Connolly, said the orca encounter was terrifying.
“Honestly, [it was] almost touchable, it was at least three metres away.”
The pair thought it was a shark, so they tried to escape the water rather quickly, with Connolly saying it had been a ”terrifying” discovery.
They then realised it was an orca and spotted two more close by, but Aull and Connolly still opted to exit the water.
They said it took them roughly over a minute to reach shore, where they watched from the safety of the beach.
Connolly said she acknowledged the orca might have just been “wanting to play”.
“[But] we weren’t going to wait and see.
“It was a bit of an adventure.”
Aull said while the encounter had been “a fright and a shock”, it wouldn’t stop her from going back into the water.
“It was just a one-off.”
Once they realised it was an orca, two more orcas a bit further away were seen approaching closer.
Meanwhile, Hayley Jones of Glass Bottom Boat Whitianga was among the spectators on the beach filming.
She posted the video on a local community page, saying the orca encounter was exciting.
“[The orca] was swimming shallow, looking for stingrays and swam straight past [the two women].”
She said after it passed, it tried to “surf in a wave”.
“It was a great watch.”
Jones said she believed the two women were busy talking, and “didn’t see the female orca approaching”.
“The kids and I shouted out to them to get their attention, then they saw the black dorsal,” she said.
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.