Wildlife spring winter surprises

After 25 years working around Dunedin’s wild coastline, I love the fact that winter still has some complete surprises when you are living at the edge of the dynamic southern ocean.

Over the last month, a juvenile male elephant seal has taken his winter vacation at Long Beach.

We usually see elephant seals on land in spring (breeding season) or summer (moulting).

Looking at sighting records, very little activity has been recorded in winter months.

The opportunity for locals to observe this visitor over June and July was very special and provides an insight into winter behaviour.

Was this once in a generation or, more hopefully, a sign of things to come?

He has been well behaved, mostly preoccupied in sparring with driftwood logs.

I know many locals who will be sad when he goes.

People have mostly respected his space and kept dogs on leads.

The elephant seal also happily accommodated ORC contractors who needed to open the creek mouth to stop the village flooding.

There were a couple of instances when people unnecessarily pushed past him in vehicles.

Please remember the Dunedin City Council bylaws do not allow for vehicles on beaches except for boat-launching or emergencies, and the marine mammal protection regulations require that vehicles keep 50m away from marine mammals.

Sea lions are now mostly tucked away in sheltered winter habitat when on land.

Satellite tracking has shown they roughly spend half their time on land, and half their time at sea, so in winter our chance to see them on land during daylight hours is reduced.

I met a young sea lion, a two-year-old, P470, up from Port Pegasus, who is frequenting the Shag Point area.

To get out of the northerly wind he found a path and habitat at the southern corner of Katiki Beach.

Unfortunately this area is bordered by the intersection between Shag Point Road and SH1.

In the meantime, we have chased him away and fenced him out, but you can see where this is going.

He has already managed to find other ways to get up to his favoured habitat, and, to be honest, he is probably safer here than along the next 3km of SH1.

During winter months, we are likely to see more leopard seals coming north from the Antarctic cold and darkness, and southern right whales coming to the shelter New Zealand offers from winter storms at sea to breed in the relative calm.

Last week a rare beaked whale washed ashore at Taieri Mouth.

We believe this to be a male spade-toothed whale, Mesoplodon traversii, known only from six occurrences so far since the first bones were identified as something unique on Pitt Island in 1872.

With so little information to work with we can say very little about the habitat needs of this species, or why it ended up coming ashore at Taieri Mouth.

What we do know is that this individual provides an amazing opportunity to learn more, and together with local Kai Tahu of Ōtākou Rūnaka we recovered him for matauranga and science.

Many thanks to Trevor King for assistance in moving this 5m, 2-tonne, mystery animal, and to a local coldstore for accommodating him temporarily while we plan next steps.

After all, winter provides us all a bit of breathing space for festivity and planning, right?