{"id":81780,"date":"2025-10-16T08:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81780\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T08:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:31:07","slug":"dog-owner-sebastian-marinkovich-fined-after-seal-mauling-on-tasman-beach-loses-bid-to-save-pets-from-being-destroyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81780\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog owner Sebastian Marinkovich fined after seal mauling on Tasman beach, loses bid to save pets from being destroyed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, in the Nelson District Court<\/a> he was declined name suppression and lost his fight to save his dogs from destruction, which followed his unsuccessful bid for a discharge without conviction. <\/p>\n

\u201cI accept this will be upsetting for you, but the dogs will need to be destroyed,\u201d Judge Jo Rielly said after lengthy consideration of the circumstances around what happened.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe seal mauled by dogs on Kina Beach near Motueka was left with puncture wounds to its head and neck. It was later believed to have died. Photo \/ DoC<\/p>\n

In the late afternoon of September 7 last year, Marinkovich was walking his two dogs, a retriever\/labrador named Bo, and a grey German shepherd\/Siberian husky named Koda, off lead on Kina Beach south of Motueka<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was in the designated dog exercise area when they spotted a fur seal near the water. One ran off towards it and the other followed.<\/p>\n

The attack, which lasted about 30 minutes, despite Marinkovich being nearby, left punctures in the seal\u2019s neck and head, DoC said in a summary of facts.<\/p>\n

Marinkovich\u2019s lawyer Tony Bamford said it was not clear what triggered the dogs to act like they did and whether the seal might have acted in a way that made the dogs react.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever the reason, one dog attacked and the other one joined in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bamford said Marinkovich panicked and didn\u2019t know what to do, but conceded he should have intervened earlier.<\/p>\n

DoC said the seal was unable to defend itself or escape into the ocean.<\/p>\n

Police turned up after a member of the public called them. Marinkovich told them he noticed the dogs had spotted something near the water\u2019s edge, which, at the time, he had not realised was a seal.<\/p>\n

He said what happened was \u201cvery uncharacteristic\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just absolutely \u2018went\u2019 and I had no way of stopping them,\u201d he told the police. <\/p>\n

He said both dogs were domesticated and normally very docile. <\/p>\n

Police placed the seal they presumed was dead on some nearby rocks, but when a DoC officer arrived the next morning to collect it, it could not be found.<\/p>\n

Bamford argued seals were \u201chardy, resilient\u201d animals that faced heavier predation at sea and it was safe to conclude the animal in this case did not die.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany more seals die from fishing-related activity than attacks by dogs or humans,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Judge Rielly said it was more likely the seal had died as a result of the attack or was critically injured and later died.<\/p>\n

She said the attack involving two dogs would have \u201cmost certainly\u201d been traumatic for the seal.<\/p>\n

Bamford said Marinkovich was horrified by what had happened and had apologised to DoC.<\/p>\n

The dogs were later surrendered to the Tasman District Council<\/a> and temporarily impounded but released days later back to Marinkovich.<\/p>\n

\"SebastianSebastian Marinkovich was walking his two dogs on Kina Beach when they spotted a fur seal and attacked it. The mauling went on for about 30 minutes before a member of the public called police. Photo \/ DoC<\/p>\n

They had since been kept in an enclosed yard and muzzled when taken out in public.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Mike Bodie said the \u201cprolonged mauling\u201d of a warm-blooded animal that felt pain and trauma was concerning, as was Marinkovich\u2019s apparent lack of empathy at the time.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201crightly or wrongly\u201d, Parliament had decided that people and wildlife deserved the same level of protection from dog attacks.<\/p>\n

Bodie said the court must impose a destruction order, for consistency next to other similar cases.<\/p>\n

Under the Dog Control Act<\/a>, an order for the destruction of a dog could be made unless satisfied that the circumstances of the offence were exceptional and did not warrant such a move.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it will be devastating but that\u2019s the case for anyone,\u201d Bodie said in arguing Marinkovich presented no exceptional circumstances against such an order.<\/p>\n

Judge Rielly said almost every person who appeared in courts around the country for such offending involving a beloved pet felt an \u201cacute sense of trepidation and grief over a pet being destroyed\u201d.<\/p>\n

But in this case, it was \u201chard to understand\u201d how Marinkovich could have seen his beloved pets attack a seal for 30 minutes and not stop it.<\/p>\n

Judge Rielly accepted an explanation that earlier head injuries he suffered might have compromised his ability to function and to react, but in the absence of any expert evidence, the court was unable to put much weight on that suggestion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are a highly regarded member of the community and a much-loved husband and father who lives a very pro-social lifestyle, and who cares greatly for a family which is very traumatised by this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Marinkovich was fined $1000 on each charge, from a potential maximum $3000 fine on each.<\/p>\n

DoC said the native New Zealand fur seal<\/a> was slowly recovering having been hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

Because of the amount of time spent on beaches and near the public, fur seals were susceptible to risks posed by dogs.<\/p>\n

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ\u2019s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, in the Nelson District Court he was declined name suppression and lost his fight to save his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,3648,7972,682,1040,4058,14167,8912,9219,1866,19631,71,42,5606,10933,11517,62864,62865,43,90,2738,31252,6289,11590,30394,62863,427,2224,1361,1961,61,40,38,41,39,1455],"class_list":["post-81780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-animal","tag-beach","tag-being","tag-bid","tag-contains","tag-destroyed","tag-distressing","tag-dog","tag-find","tag-fined","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-images","tag-injured","tag-loses","tag-marinkovich","tag-mauling","tag-news","tag-on","tag-owner","tag-pets","tag-readers","tag-save","tag-seal","tag-sebastian","tag-story","tag-tasman","tag-that","tag-this","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81780","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=81780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}