For a second she thought she was seeing a whirlpool in the Water of Leith, but it turned out to be a frolicking sea lion.
For the next 20 minutes, a Dunedin woman watched a male sea lion "going crazy" chasing and catching four fish in the urban waterway.
After a session at the gym last night, Jasmin Lee was walking home along Anzac Ave about 7pm.
When she crossed the bridge at the Water of Leith and heard a "really weird" splash in the water. She looked into the water and in the darkness saw what she first thought was "a little whirlpool".
"He was just swimming in circles and all I could see was the water going around in circles.
"And then after a little bit of looking — because it was obviously dark — I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a frickin’ seal'."
The former Otago Polytechnic student followed the sea lion up and down the river along Minerva St, marvelling at the behaviour of the playful "water dog".
"He’s like chasing them.
"And then there’s a big splash and kerfuffle when he’s like catching them in his mouth and then he brought them up to the rocks to ‘show me’.
"He carried the fish in his mouth, and then spat it out on the rocks and then looked up at me. He just looked like he was having so much fun.
‘‘Honestly, it was a ball watching him, I just wanted to throw him a fish, like, ‘Good job!’ "
After moving down from Taranaki she no longer had any pets and it was nice to spend time with the marine mammal, she said.
A New Zealand Sea Lion Trust spokeswoman confirmed the marine mammal in the video was a male sea lion.
"He is looking very relaxed and happy.
"I can't say I've seen a sea lion in the Water of Leith myself, but I'm not particularly surprised by him cruising around up there, either."
The spokeswoman said she had seen male sea lions quite a distance up the Taieri River, for example. And she believed a few years ago there was a young male who was as far inland as Henley.
Where the encounter happened was quite close to where the Water of Leith emptied into Otago Harbour, "so not too far afield from normal sea lion stamping grounds".
Back in 2016 there was a juvenile elephant seal who swam up the Leith quite a ways further than that, too.
"It's safe to say we should expect pinnipeds just about anywhere in Dunedin."
