{"id":497243,"date":"2026-02-22T18:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/497243\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T18:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:15:11","slug":"seal-spotted-on-banks-of-maribyrnong-river-in-aberfeldie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/497243\/","title":{"rendered":"Seal spotted on banks of Maribyrnong River in Aberfeldie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the sun out and not a cloud in the sky, the Maribyrnong River trail was the perfect spot to bask in the sun \u2014 or at least one local seal thought so.<\/p>\n<p>Dozens of residents enjoying a morning walk or run were overjoyed to come across the Australian fur seal sunning itself on the banks of the waterway near The Boulevard in Aberfeldie on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was so cute,\u201d one local resident said. \u201cEvery time it gets in the shade from the tree it wiggles to be back in the sun again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Authorities were notified and a barricade was placed around to protect the seal.<\/p>\n<p>But when the Melbourne Zoo marine response unit arrived to try and collect the furry mammal and take him for an examination, he slipped back into the river.<\/p>\n<p>It is not the first time a seal has been spotted in the river, with another filmed <a class=\"body-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.heraldsun.com.au\/news\/national\/seal-plays-with-its-lunch-in-melbourne-river-australia\/video\/b53cfbe9046d5e0466c603222f04b910\" data-tgev=\"event119\" data-tgev-container=\"bodylink\" data-tgev-order=\"b53cfbe9046d5e0466c603222f04b910\" data-tgev-label=\"news\" data-tgev-metric=\"ev\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">frolicking in the waterway playing with a fish<\/a> in its mouth in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>It is illegal to touch or feed a seal, with Wildlife Victoria rules warning to keep 30m away from them when on land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the sun out and not a cloud in the sky, the Maribyrnong River trail was the perfect&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-497243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}