Female leopard seal makes appearance at ‘Wee Beach’

A female leopard seal, slightly smaller than the 2m young adult male that has made several visits to Oamaru Harbour since the beginning of "leopard seal sighting season", spent the weekend at what some locals call ‘‘the Wee Beach’’ inside Oamaru’s historic breakwater.

LeopardSeals.org research assistant Giverny Forbes, of Dunedin, says she has now identified two leopard seals at Oamaru, one at Aramoana, and one at Brighton, since the beginning of August.

LeopardSeals.org has identified 18 individuals on New Zealand’s coastline this year, yet leopard seals remain classified as vagrant, meaning there are theoretically only 15 individuals in New Zealand in any given year.