A surfer at Brighton Beach in Dunedin got more than he bargained for when he was bitten by a sea lion this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Hato Hone St John was notified of an incident at Brighton Beach about 1.30pm and responded with one ambulance and one first response unit.<\/p>\n
Their crews assessed and treated one patient who was transported to Dunedin Hospital in a moderate condition.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency (Fenz) were also on standby at the scene.<\/p>\n
The incident involved a sea lion biting the leg of the unsuspecting surfer.<\/p>\n
The surfer appeared in good spirits after he was helped to the ambulance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Department of Conservation operations manager\u00a0Gabe Davies said it was fairly common for people to see seals or sea lions in coastal environments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“On the land, we ask people to stay at least 20m away from them,” Mr Davies said.<\/p>\n
“In the sea, seals and sea lions are more curious and will sometimes investigate people.<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely uncommon for these interactions to be other than gentle. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A surfer at Brighton Beach in Dunedin got more than he bargained for when he was bitten by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-362168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}