On Monday, Jarred Wilson shared photos of what he said were a group of five young men "getting up in the sea lion’s space".
He said he took 117 photos of the group’s behaviour, circulated some of the photos on social media and sent them to the Department of Conservation.
However, one of the young men photographed, who declined to be named, said they were not doing anything untoward.
He said the group were walking along the hills above Smaills Beach for some exercise when they decided to go down to the beach for a quick dip.
"As we came off the path down to the beach there were sea lions on either side of the entrance — we walked past hesitantly."
They stood on the beach talking for 10 minutes, quite close to Mr Wilson, before deciding the temperature at the beach had dropped a bit too much to go for a swim.
The sea lions were on either side of the exit from the beach, and when they tried to walk past, they gave chase.
"We’re all laughing and videoing them chasing us as it’s not every day you get chased by a sea lion," he said.
He said if Mr Wilson was unhappy with their behaviour, he could have just talked to them.
"I don't know, if he was mad and thought we were annoying the animals ... he could have talked to us or something.
"He used some pretty bad words to describe us — it definitely took me by surprise."
In response, Mr Wilson said he was a "middle-aged bloke with a bung knee" who was not in the habit of approaching a group of young guys who "may or may not have gotten aggressive".
He stood by his version of events.
"I’ve have forwarded 117 images on to Doc including images as one of the animals made its presence known and one of the boys approaching it with a mobile phone — I will be leaving these with Doc for them to do their investigation.
"My posts on social media were of the ‘Hey maybe don’t be d........’ type, highlighting poor behaviour — I leave the images to speak for themselves."
