Make way - sea lions back on home turf
by Sally Blundell of Frank Film
They’re back.
Up to half a tonne of big-eyed, long-whiskered, galumphing curiosity, feeding, breeding and cavorting in the shallows, slumping across roads or snoozing on beds of kelp along the Otago coastline.
“They’re very much a curious animal,” says Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Jim Fyfe. “And not afraid of people. They've got a big, big ego.”
The New Zealand or Hooker’s sea lion, also known as pakake and whakahao, is one of the rarest species of sea lion in the world. Once numbering an estimated 60-100,000 throughout the country, by the mid-nineteenth century hunting first by Māori then by sealers and...