A leopard seal lying on Petone Beach in Lower Hutt has been attracting dozens of curious spectators.<\/p>\n
The Department of Conservation (DOC) estimates more than 150 people have come to see the sea mammal since it came ashore on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
“It’s so awesome to have animals like this come and visit us around New Zealand,” says DOC ranger Melody McLaughlin<\/p>\n
“I really have to give a shoutout to people because they’ve been awesome. They’ve been really respectful, keeping space, giving the animal plenty of space.<\/p>\n
“This part of Petone Beach is a off-leash dog walking area. And everybody yesterday and today that we have seen have had their dogs on leads.”<\/p>\n
McLaughlin said that’s wise because leopard seals can severely injure or kill dogs that get too close, particularly smaller breeds.<\/p>\n
“I think people just have to be aware these animals are apex predators. They are not afraid of moving objects coming in front of them.”<\/p>\n
At the same time, she said people need to be mindful that leopard seals are a protected species, so need to be given their space.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin said the sight of them on New Zealand beaches is rare but becoming more common.<\/p>\n
She said DOC staff have not been trying to get this one back into the water.<\/p>\n
“He’s perfectly happy having the snooze on the beach here,” she said. “And he will go when he’s good and ready to go back into the water.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leopard seal lying on Petone Beach in Lower Hutt has been attracting dozens of curious spectators. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-881816","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\/881816","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=881816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}