the dreaded Hydrurga

---

I had a tip-off today via the internet birding community that there was a leopard seal on my local beach. Its not something that occurs every day and I'd never seen a leopard seal before, so it was exciting news. My boss said "oh yeah, that was in the paper yesterday...", so I took the only sensible course of action and ditched work to go seal-hunting.

Leopard seals are extremely large and fearsome predators of the Antarctic ocean where they feast upon the flesh of poor unwary penguins. Every so often an immature male, or sometimes even an adventuresome adult, leaves the cold southern waters to go exploring further north. Whenever one turns up off New Zealand or Australia and hauls its lean pale body onto the beach the locals think it must be sick because it looks so unusual and skinny, and they call the wildlife rescue people. Most of the time its perfectly healthy, maybe moulting a bit like the one here now, but otherwise fine. It just hangs out on the beach, goes fishing for some unwary endangered penguins, generally just chills out, then heads away again, no doubt back to more polar climes for the summer.

I knew where this seal had been yesterday but not where it might be today, so I decided to just walk the entire beach until I (hopefully) found it. Along the way I passed probably twenty people out walking their dogs on the beach and exactly four of them had leashes, which wasn't a good sign. Fortunately when I eventually found the seal it was down the quieter end where there weren't many people at all. Still, I did have to warn a couple not to approach too close to the seal because the guy was all set to walk right up to it, possibly with the intention of patting it. Apart for the stress that it can cause to the animal and the danger to the person if the seal gets ornery, it is of course illegal to annoy or harrass native marine mammals in New Zealand. Another lady came along, tied her dog up well away from the seal and took some photos, keeping her distance. The seal was just a young one, only about six foot long, and seemed docile enough. Hopefully he won't get disturbed too much by passers-by and dogs while he is in residence.

---