\u201cA seal has washed up here on shore and a man is trying to feed it fish with his bare hands,\u201d Kosmos says at the start of the video.<\/p>\n
The clip shows the man approaching the animal before underarm throwing the fish towards it.<\/p>\n
The fish hits the sand, bounces up and strikes the seal in the face, startling it.<\/p>\n
The seal lifts its head and rolls over as the man shouts: \u201cEat it\u201d.<\/p>\n
People watching from behind a temporary netted boundary can be heard telling him to leave the animal alone. It was not clear when the footage was filmed.<\/p>\n
Kosmos later said in the comments he did not know the man and had been filming the seal from behind the boundary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was literally just as shocked as everyone else watching it happen,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is okay, and no human or animal was harmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
A social media video shows a man throwing a dead fish at a leopard seal on Petone Beach. Photo \/ @kosmos_nz<\/p>\n
Commenters condemned the man\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew this kinda s*** was gonna happen once the seal was posted online,\u201d one person wrote.<\/p>\n
Another said anyone \u201cmessing with\u201d the leopard seal should be heavily fined. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a leopard seal? He\u2019s lucky he\u2019s not getting dragged out to ocean,\u201d another wrote.<\/p>\n
One commenter praised people heard intervening in the video: \u201cProps to the women who yelled \u2018leave him alone!\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
The leopard seal returned to the ocean this morning. Photo \/ Sam McGee<\/p>\n
DoC marine reserves ranger Breanna Hindmarsh said throwing food near marine mammals was prohibited under the Marine Mammals Protection Regulations, as was disturbing or harassing them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve also seen reports of dogs approaching and possibly attacking it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are following up on these reports.\u201d<\/p>\n
DoC set up a cordon while the seal rested on the beach and asked people to remain at least 20m away.<\/p>\n
Hindmarsh said leopard seals were \u201capex predators with powerful jaws and sharp teeth\u201d and could be dangerous if provoked or threatened.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of the intention, disturbing marine mammals like this is not okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaving them alone and admiring from afar is the best option for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
DoC said it was also an offence under the Dog Control Act for a dog to attack a marine mammal, which could result in heavy penalties and the dog being destroyed.<\/p>\n
Anyone who saw a seal injured, being harassed or in danger was urged to contact DoC.<\/p>\n
An unexpected seal visitor caused a stir more than 20km inland at a Rangit\u012bkei school this morning.<\/p>\n
A young New Zealand fur seal was found splashing around on the hockey fields at Rangit\u012bkei College in Marton.<\/p>\n
Rangit\u012bkei College principal Penny Keet said the school had never seen anything like it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe poor little thing was probably very disoriented and a bit lost, which obviously it would be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe poor thing, it had 300 kids trying to look at it,\u201d Keet said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we were trying to keep the kids away and stop it from being too stressed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cA seal has washed up here on shore and a man is trying to feed it fish with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[432,3648,1975,7972,1558,1389,690,26034,22195,16840,8321,42,49947,7997,2513,5158,43,1642,16348,49948,42371,30394,45608,84459,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-593092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-action","tag-animal","tag-at","tag-beach","tag-been","tag-conservation","tag-dead","tag-department","tag-doc","tag-filmed","tag-fish","tag-headlines","tag-hutt","tag-leopard","tag-lower","tag-man","tag-news","tag-online","tag-outrage","tag-petone","tag-prompting","tag-seal","tag-sparking","tag-throwing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593092","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=593092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}