Two Tasman dogs at the centre of a long running fur seal mauling case have been saved from a destruction order after the High Court overturned the convictions imposed on their owner, ending a saga that had drawn widespread attention from animal welfare advocates and beachgoers across the top of the South Island.
Bo, a retriever-labrador cross, and Koda, a grey German shepherd-Siberian husky cross, had been ordered destroyed by the Nelson District Court in October last year after attacking a New Zealand fur seal at Kina Beach, south of Motueka, on 7 September 2024. Their owner, Sebastian Marinkovich, had been convicted on two Department of Conservation charges of being the owner of dogs that attacked a protected marine mammal, fined $1,000 on each charge, and told the dogs would have to be put down.
In a decision released on Friday, Justice Jonathan Eaton allowed Marinkovich’s appeal, quashed the convictions, set aside the destruction order and granted a discharge without conviction. He ordered Marinkovich to pay $500 to an appropriate Department of Conservation fund in the Nelson region.
According to the judgment, Marinkovich had been walking the two dogs off lead in the late afternoon at Kina Beach, which is a designated dog exercise area. Both animals spotted a fur seal resting near the water and bolted towards it. The attack lasted around 30 minutes and left the seal with puncture wounds to its head and neck. Marinkovich told police he panicked, did not know what to do and ultimately formed the view that letting the dogs continue was, in his mind, the most humane way to end what he believed was the seal’s suffering. He said two earlier accidents, a car crash and a horse riding incident, had left him with lingering effects that affected how quickly he could respond.
The fate of the seal itself was never fully established. Police who arrived at the scene placed the animal on nearby rocks believing it was already dead. When a Department of Conservation officer returned the following morning to collect the body, the seal could not be found. The High Court noted that the prosecution could not definitively prove the animal had died and accepted it was possible the seal had recovered enough to make it back into the sea, a point that influenced the assessment of how serious the offending was.
Both dogs were impounded by Tasman District Council and underwent behavioural assessments while they were held. Qualified assessors described them as sweet and friendly animals, with the report noting that Koda could benefit from learning better manners but neither dog showed any pattern of aggression. The family home has a fully enclosed and fenced backyard, and the dogs had no prior history of attacks on people or other animals. They were eventually released back to the Marinkovich family pending the appeal, subject to behavioural conditions.
Marinkovich was originally charged with owning a dog that had caused the death of a protected animal, the most serious available offence under the Marine Mammals Protection Act framework. Prosecutors later withdrew that charge and proceeded on a lesser offence reflecting the uncertainty about whether the seal had in fact died. Despite that change, the District Court still imposed convictions and a destruction order, prompting the appeal.
Justice Eaton described the circumstances of the incident as highly unusual and significantly removed from typical dog attack prosecutions, where there is usually a history of aggression, escape from properties or attacks in places dogs should not have been. He found the gravity of the offending was lower than the sentencing judge had assessed, and that imposing a destruction order on two otherwise well behaved family pets was, in his words, genuinely disproportionate to what had happened.
The decision is likely to be studied closely by councils, the Department of Conservation, and dog owners on coastlines where seals haul out, particularly through Tasman, Marlborough, Wellington and the Otago and Southland coasts where fur seal numbers have rebuilt strongly over the last two decades. New Zealand’s fur seal population was driven close to extinction in the 19th century but has recovered to an estimated 200,000 animals around the mainland and outlying islands, and seals are now appearing on beaches that locals had not seen them on in generations. That recovery has created a quiet but recurring tension at popular dog exercise spots, where domestic animals and a protected marine mammal increasingly meet in the same patch of sand.
The Department of Conservation has consistently advised dog owners to keep animals on a lead near coasts where seals are known to haul out, especially during the winter months, when sub-adult males travel inland up rivers and on to farmland in some parts of the country. Anyone who finds a seal that has been attacked or appears injured is asked to call the DOC hotline on 0800 362 468 rather than approach the animal directly. DOC’s seal advice for dog owners remains in place after the judgment, and the agency had not commented publicly on the appeal outcome at the time of writing.
For Marinkovich, the ruling closes a costly chapter that had run for more than 18 months between the original incident, the District Court conviction, the impoundment of the dogs and the High Court appeal. For Bo and Koda, it means a return to family life rather than a destruction order. The wider lesson, that even on a designated dog exercise beach a moment of distraction can have very serious consequences for protected wildlife, will not be lost on the country’s coastal dog walking community.
Read the full RNZ report on the High Court decision, and the earlier District Court coverage.
What do you make of the High Court’s decision to spare Bo and Koda? Should off lead dog beaches be reviewed where seals now haul out regularly, or was this rightly treated as a one off case? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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