Above:
Luke Murphy avoids a Sea Lion Charging at him at St Clair Beach, Dunedin.A few articles have appeared in the ODT over the last month about the suggested behaviour of humans around Sea Lions in their environment when we either share the water with them, or encounter them on the beach (left article) and the response from the trust a few days later on the right:
(the pic in the first article below misquotes Luke Murphy as the surfer, it was actually a student called Fin, the ODT took the pic straight off my blog
see post here)
Above and below: Sea Lion Dionne, as Named by Rod Rust at St Clair beach a few months back.
Posts
4 comments:
I've had many encounters with sea lions here and in the Catlins but never had any real aggro. The advice of ignoring them seems to work. They are like dogs so don't wave your arms, don't make eye contact and try to ignore them (even when they play with your feet). If you are lucky someone nearby will yell at them, wave their arms or splash the water and remove your problem! The younger ones seem to be more playful and interested in human company but I've been checked out by huge bull male sea lions from time to time too. I've never found them interested in playing but they are intimidating so I choose to quietly leave the water if they start hanging around. And contrary to DOC comments they do sometimes attack and bite people - I've seen a swimmer with sea lion puncture wounds on their leg and heard of divers who have been badly bitten.
Did the ODT take your pic without permission?
what happened was the article theme was offered to the ODT with me as a contact for pics, the reporter asked me via phone which surfer was which in the dec sea lion blog post. They said they only paid their staff photographers, so I said they could use a pic for the 'cause' for free. I never heard back, and then saw the article, so they must have got it straight off my blog.
Interesting how the ODT jumps at the opportunity for a story re sea lions meets "man" at the beach but fails to report (without bias in favour of the DCC) on the big issue facing Dunedin beaches (and potentially all NZ beaches)i.e. DCC's bungled management of Ocean Beach erosion to-date and DCC's continuing contempt for the likes of Nic who is attempting to keep DCC honest on this issue, save the beach, and also save taxpayers forking unnecessarily for years.
Nic needs our support urgently - go to Nic's new blog and put in a submission to DCC on the erosion issue.
Meanwhile dont buy the ODT unless you want to be brainwashed by biased reporting.
Post a Comment