{"id":598419,"date":"2026-04-10T18:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/598419\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T18:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:41:13","slug":"seal-sleeping-on-road-causes-mornington-peninsula-traffic-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/598419\/","title":{"rendered":"Seal sleeping on road causes Mornington Peninsula traffic delays"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sleeping seal has held up motorists making their way along the Mornington Peninsula, causing a major road to be closed in both directions in the popular coastal area after it stopped to rest on the roadway.<\/p>\n

Police helped direct traffic on Point Nepean Road at Dromana, south-east of Melbourne, after reports were made about the sleeping animal, and orange traffic cones were set up to protect the seal.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The snoozing seal stopped traffic in both directions at one point. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Gen Abbott and her daughter were driving along the Nepean Highway to a coffee shop in Dromana when they faced a roadblock.<\/p>\n

The Safety Beach local told the ABC she was not surprised to see the “local seal” who is a regular visitor often spotted along the coast as far as Rosebud.<\/p>\n

\"Cars<\/p>\n

Orange traffic cones were in place to protect the seal from passing motorists. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“I sat and watched with my daughter for over an hour to make sure he was safe,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We have been following him for a while around the peninsula.”<\/p>\n

Ms Abbott said it took a couple of hours for wildlife rescuers to arrive and safely escort the seal back into the water.<\/p>\n

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The incident was logged on the VicTraffic website, with motorists earlier advised to avoid the area where possible and allow extra travel time.<\/p>\n

“Victoria Police is directing traffic on Point Nepean Road, Dromana near Anthony’s Nose, due to a live seal on the roadway,” the alert read.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Passersby captured the moment the sleepy seal returned to the water. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Disturbances by roving seals are nothing new to communities that border Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay.<\/p>\n

An elephant seal dubbed Henry is believed to have made appearances in recent years at both Blairgowrie and Point Lonsdale \u2014 where it smashed the windows of a petrol station<\/a> \u2014 and a fur seal nicknamed Grumpy disrupted an annual regatta at Blairgowrie<\/a> in December, blocking access to some boats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sleeping seal has held up motorists making their way along the Mornington Peninsula, causing a major road…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,151426,44,1158,9493,29338,291883,1191],"class_list":["post-598419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mornington-peninsula","tag-news","tag-police","tag-road","tag-seal","tag-sleeping-seal","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598419","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=598419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}