It was not only the first leopard seal sighting of the year for University of Otago master’s student Giverny Forbes, the leopard seal was the 50th one she had come across.
"I’d be near the top of the list of people who have seen the most individual leopard seals in New Zealand," she said yesterday.
"Who knows, I might get to 60 this year."
Once considered a vagrant species, leopard seals were granted resident status by the Department of Conservation in 2019 and there were fewer than 250 in New Zealand.
Curiously, sightings of the animals on Dunedin beaches dry up in March and the animals are not seen again until this month, Miss Forbes said.
During "leopard seal season", now under way, there was a real spike of sightings in September and October, but the animals had been reported from this month through to the end of summer, she said.
"Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to follow leopard seals around, so we don’t know where they’re going or what they’re doing exactly," Miss Forbes said.
"There’s the assumption that they travel here from Antarctica and then travel back and maybe that has something to do with the food they’re eating, or how old they are, but we’ve never actually managed to track a leopard seal travelling between Antarctica and New Zealand."
Since arriving in Dunedin in 2018, she had seen an average of 10 individual leopard seals a year, Miss Forbes said.
While she might see the same animal over a period of days, weeks or months in any given season, she typically did not see the same animal, identified through its unique markings, or spots, year on year.
The only individual she had seen year in and year out was a 3.1m female named Owha, who was first photographed off the coast of Dunedin in 2012, but was now well known for frequenting marina pontoons on the east coast of Northland and the Waitemata Harbour, she said.
