NZ PM's husband fends off shark

New Zealand's "first bloke" Clarke Gayford revealed yesterday how he fought off an angry shark with a pole while diving off Auckland.

Gayford, the partner of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, tweeted a picture of himself keeping the predator at bay while a dolphin swims in the background.

However, instead of launching a Flipper-style rescue to chase off the shark, Gayford said the dolphin was content to watch the underwater drama unfold from a distance.

"So it turns out that not only do dolphins not help, they actually quite like watching," he tweeted. "A childhood myth is ruined."

Gayford, who hosts a television fishing show, said he was helping a camera operator shoot footage for the educational show Young Ocean Explorers when the incident occurred.

He said he was "swimming safety", or keeping watch so the cameraman could concentrate on filming bottle-nosed dolphins and false killer whales off Great Barrier Island near Auckland.