Our planned early August trip to Auckland became a trip to Ohope due to a flare of COVID-19. With the outbreak back under control we again scheduled a trip north. The challenge this time was a truck that had blown over on the harbour bridge damaging a beam a day or so before we arrived. The resultant lane closures made the usual congestion much worse and limited us to the North Shore.
After finally making it to Birkenhead we took a walk down to the Chelsea Sugar factory and Edin spotted a pod of Orca hunting in the harbour. A little patience enabled a shot with the Orca and the congested harbour Bridge and Sky Tower behind. I have seen Orca a number of times including a pod just beyond the breakers while swimming at Mount Maunganui but never had the chance to photograph them with New Zealand’s largest city as a background.
New Zealand Orca are unique in that they are specialist predators of Stingrays which they hunt in sandy harbours. It is a learned skill and it seemed as though this pod were teaching some juveniles the technique.
The main aim of our trip was to catch up with Edin after the Auckland lockdown and to visit the NZ Geographic Photographer of the Year exhibition at the New Zealand Maritime Museum. To avoid the bridge congestion we drove to Devonport for breakfast and caught the ferry across. It was an absolutely perfect spring day so a much nicer trip than sitting in a vehicle queue.
Passing the Devonport Naval Base we got a good look at HMNZS Aotearoa, our newest naval vessel commissioned at the end of July 2020.
We arrived at the Maritime Museum just before it opened for the day so were first in and largely had the exhibition to ourselves. It is great to see a public exhibition of the finalist prints again and especially as they are the backlit displays as when the exhibition was at the Auckland Museum in 2017.
Edin is making a bit of a habit of being a finalist in the Wildlife category. She achieved a Highly Commended in 2016 and was Runner-up in 2018. I have visited the Maritime Museum before but always for bird conferences so have not had time to explore the displays. This time we had an opportunity to explore and it is a very worthwhile visit with information and displays about all aspects of Aotearoa New Zealand maritime history.
Returning to Devonport we made the obligatory stop at the bookshop and I took the chance to play with some Street photography and reflections again.
A quick trip back to Birkenhead for lunch was followed by a long awaited visit to the Muriwai Gannet colony that I will share next week.
Photos with Nikon D850 and 18-35mm F3.5-4.5 lens except Orca with 300mm f4PF
