Clarke Gayford: Action stations

Great Barrier Island with Little Barrier in the background. Photo / Wild Film

The bounty off Great Barrier is as rich as the life on the island.

We could have filmed our entire series at Great Barrier Island and in the waters around it. I must have been a hundred times or more now, never once having the same experience.

To perfectly frame this, I recently found myself landing on the island with cameraman Steve Hathaway and his daughter Riley of Young Ocean Explorers. We were off to film the nesting burrows of one of my favourite birds, the black petrel, or taiko, a real character of an avian, which is our second most endangered seabird. We had barely landed when a call came through that a pod of False Killer Whales had been spotted offshore.

Clarke Gayford comes face to face with a shark while filming Fish of the Day season two. Photo / Wild Film

False Killers Whales aren't actually whales but a type of large black dolphin with small dorsal fins and are often confused for pilot whales. We have several pods in NZ each year when the water warms to 19C. Steve had spent three years tracking these mammals for the BBC's Blue Planet, so this was too good an opportunity to miss.

What followed was one of those special ocean days that occasionally just click into place. We raced to track down and film these little studied creatures as they mixed with bottle-nose dolphins and tore schools of large kingfish to bits. Incredibly social animals, they swim in tight packs like a bunch of wriggling sausages. I came away thinking however, that whoever lazily named them "False Killer Whales" needs a sternly worded email. It would be the equivalent of us calling cats "False Dogs". But then again, our most commonly stranded whale is called a "pilot" so maybe there is a dark sense of humour among sea naming folk.

My day off the island ended swimming "safety" for Steve among a pod of the dolphins.

This is where I float with the cameraman, being the eyes in the back of his head and trying not to get in shot. This turned out to be quite useful as, thanks to all the kingfish blood in the water, a couple of large Bronze Whaler sharks had shown up. This required the odd prod or two with a pole to keep them off us in the water. Dealing with moments like that is an excellent way to make yourself feel truly alive. It puts other trivial life niggles into perspective.

By letting people know about the things often unseen on our doorstep, I hope to create a bit more of a connection with the ocean around us.

Clarke Gayford and chef Anthony McNamara. Photo / Wild Film

To think all that incredible action was just off our sixth largest island. On land, about 60 per cent of Great Barrier is a DoC reserve, the results of which spill over into the rest of the place. The well-worn cliche that it's "like stepping back in time" often gets pulled out but maybe we've got that all wrong. Maybe this balanced nature utopia is where we should be stepping forward in time to become instead. The healing properties of the prolific birdsong in the Glenfern Sanctuary alone would do wonders for our collective stress. The off-grid living using minimal resources would put far less strain on the environment, also reducing our target emissions. Not to mention eating healthy off the land — think of the reduced medical bills. And the sense of community you get from this place, complete with crazy eccentrics, would make for a happier living environment.

Clarke Gayford taking an early morning dive. Photo / Wild Film

Forget looking back on that, let's figure out how to get more of this happening on the mainland for the good of us all.

This concludes Clarke's column for the season. Catch his last episode of Fish of the Day, Wednesday, 8pm on Prime.