But really, 4-year-old sea lion Huna was just a social butterfly, who loved to play with surfers and enjoyed their company.
He was hit by a car on Boxing Day and was discovered dead on the side of a road near Smaills Beach on Wednesday.
While Huna gave many surfers their fair share of frights, he was remembered with fondness by some in the surfing community yesterday.
Dunedin surfing photographer Derek Morrison said the sea lion weaved in between surfers while in the water and liked to play with them.
He said many surfers did not appreciate that and got quite nervous around him.
"But most became used to him. It was like playing with a dog, only in water."
Mr Morrison said one theory explaining his playful nature was he had spent longer being cared for by his mother than most pups, and that had led to him wanting to mix with people.
The Department of Conservation (Doc) coastal Otago biodiversity ranger Jim Fyfe said Doc staff began discussions with the local runaka yesterday, to determine what would now happen to Huna’s body.
He said part of the conversation centred around whether it would be a good learning experience to do an official examination of Huna, to determine the cause of his death or if anything could have been done to save him.
"It might be worth doing a necropsy, just to understand the scale of the internal injuries.
"Superficially, you can hit a sea lion and there’s nothing much to see on the outside, but obviously it does a lot of damage on the inside."
Mr Fyfe believed Huna may have received hemorrhaging and other internal damage after being hit by the vehicle.
"So it may help us in the future, to understand how to deal with this sort of thing.
"Do we just need to euthanise them straight away, or is there equipment that we can get to do internal assessments for sea lions?
"This incident raises a whole lot of questions."
Mr Fyfe said he was grateful to the driver who hit the sea lion, for contacting Doc and letting rangers know what had happened.
"The driver feels terrible, but it’s quite understandable how it happened.
"It was a narrow road with long grass on each side.
"He was travelling in the dark and Huna popped out of the grass in front of him.
"While it’s not the outcome any of us wanted, we’re grateful that he did let us know so that we could follow up with it."
He said sea lions moving around inland at this time of year was "a new normal" and he reiterated his plea for Dunedin residents to be more vigilant when driving around the coast.
— Additional reporting Steve Hepburn
