The leopard seal that drew crowds to Petone Beach in early September has died, according to Hutt City councillor Brady Dyer. Dyer said the Department of Conservation had been told and would remove the animal on Monday, RNZ reported.
Reports differ on when she died. RNZ and the NZ Herald quote Dyer as saying the seal died on Sunday night. Stuff reports that he said on social media she had died on Saturday night. None of the reports say where the seal was when she died, and no cause of death has been made public. All three outlets said they had asked DOC for comment, and Newswire could find no DOC statement on the death on Monday morning.
RNZ reported that conservationists had said on social media they suspected the seal looked unwell. There is no public information linking her death to the harassment reported during her time on the beach.
She was a female about three metres long. DOC said in a media release on 7 September that she was first reported on the night of Friday 4 September, basking in an area popular with dog walkers, and that she returned to the sea early on Monday 7 September after a weekend on the sand. DOC staff estimated that more than 150 people came to see her, and Newswire reported on the crowds at the time. She did not go far straight away. A birdwatcher posted on the BirdingNZ forum on 8 September that the seal had been seen that afternoon swimming at the mouth of the Hutt River, from the bridge between Petone and Gracefield.
Most visitors behaved well, but not all of them. DOC marine reserves ranger Breanna Hindmarsh said in the 7 September release that staff had seen “disturbing footage of someone throwing a fish to the leopard seal (CLE-12466) and reports of dogs approaching and possibly attacking it (CLE-12467)”. Video of a man throwing a dead fish at the seal was shared on social media, and a marine biology student told RNZ he had seen several people shine torches in the seal’s face. Hindmarsh said DOC had been in contact with the man and that he was assisting with enquiries, RNZ reported on 10 September.
Disturbing or harassing a seal is an offence under the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978. DOC says anyone charged under the Act faces a maximum penalty of two years in prison or a fine of up to $250,000, and a dog owner whose dog attacks a seal could face prosecution.
The department’s advice has not changed. “So we ask people to stay at least 20 metres away from animals like this leopard seal, and never get between them and the sea,” Hindmarsh said in the release.
Leopard seals live mainly on the Antarctic pack ice. DOC’s species page says that “during autumn and winter animals disperse northward throughout the Southern Ocean, sometimes visiting New Zealand”, and that some have spent a year or more continuously in New Zealand waters. Females are the bigger sex, reaching about 3.6 metres and up to 500 kilograms, against about 3 metres and 300 kilograms for males. They are the only seals known to regularly hunt and kill warm-blooded prey, including other seals.
Wellington sees them more often than most people realise. When a 2.5 metre sub-adult hauled out at Petone in September 2022, DOC biodiversity ranger David Moss said at the time that “Leopard seals like this aren’t uncommon, with three or four showing up on Wellington beaches each year.” DOC ranger Melody McLaughlin told RNZ during this month’s visit that the Petone animal was probably the third she had seen in the last few years.
The suspicion that this seal was unwell stands out because research suggests most leopard seals seen here are in good shape. A study led by Krista Hupman, published in the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, drew together 2,711 records of leopard seals in New Zealand between the years 1200 and 2018, and identified 176 individual animals between 2014 and 2018. It found sightings were “predominantly of adult individuals of good or excellent body condition”, which cut against the older idea that the seals reaching New Zealand shores were mostly young animals in poor health.
The official view of the species has shifted more than once. That study argued leopard seals should be reclassified from vagrant to resident, and an earlier assessment placed them in the At Risk category. Then in its 2024 assessment of marine mammals, DOC’s expert panel reclassified them as a non-resident migrant, finding no evidence of successful breeding in New Zealand. The panel said it chose migrant status because the evidence shows more than 15 leopard seals visit New Zealand waters each year.
DOC records sightings and incidents in its National Marine Mammal Database and asks people to report leopard seals on 0800 DOC HOT (0800 362 468) or 0800 LEOPARD (0800 536 7273). Anyone who sees a seal that is severely injured, tangled in marine debris or being harassed by people or dogs should call the DOC HOT line. Whether a post-mortem will be carried out on the Petone seal has not been reported.
Did you see the Petone leopard seal during her visit, or have you come across one on another Wellington beach? Tell us what you saw 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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