School’s out for a firsthand conservation lesson
CLASSROOM lessons ‘‘got real’’ for pupils at Big Rock School yesterday when a small pod of southern right whales swam within 100m of the Brighton coast.
Principal David Grant said a passing truck driver alerted him.
‘‘He told us there was a pod of whales off the beach there, so I told all the classes and off we trotted to have a look.
‘‘They were about 75m away. They weren’t very far off.
‘‘You could see them quite well and their tails were flying up in the air every now and then when they came up for air.
‘‘The kids were very excited.’’
Mr Grant said it was a great learning experience for the pupils.
Reading about them in books or seeing them on television was not as good as seeing them first hand, he said.
‘‘It was a really cool thing to do. It was like, ‘Wow, we do live somewhere pretty cool’.’’
The sighting follows the sighting of a southern right whale mother and calf in Otago Harbour late last month, and more recent sightings off the coast of Allans Beach and Kuri Bush.
Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Jim Fyfe said it was difficult to say how many whales there were, but based on witness accounts, there could have been three or four.
He said it was likely they were the ones spotted in Otago Harbour.
‘‘It’s fair to say the proximity, the timing and the number of sightings between when the whales were in the harbour and now . . . they are the same whales.
‘‘There’s a fair amount of activity going on out there.
‘‘They do come inshore during winter and frolic about and have their calves and do a bit of breeding behaviour, too.’’
It was hard to know how long they would stay around for, he said.
He was delighted the children had the opportunity to see the whales and that they were excited by what they had seen.
‘‘It’s moments like that, that create future conservationists.’’