A playful sea lion got up close and personal with a handful of competitors during the 2024 National Surfing Champs at St Clair Beach in Dunedin on Sunday.
The unregistered late entrant made its appearance about midway through the knee board finals, playing in the waves around competitors and occasionally taking a close-up inspection of those on the water.
Surfing New Zealand chief executive officer Ben Kennington said it seemed like the animal was simply keen to play around.
“A lot of us are from the North Island and haven’t really seen too many sea lions in the water... I know it’s commonplace down here, but certainly not up north on, so everybody was taking photos and having a bit of a laugh.”
Dunedin photographer Mark Stevenson took several photos of the animal playing around the surfers, saying people at the beach thought the sea lion was a female known to locals as Fleur.
“She got in for a bit of action as an unregistered entry but she gave them a good show. It was the best aerial I’ve seen all day,” he said.
“The spectators loved it. The competitors, I suppose the out of town ones, were maybe a wee bit apprehensive, but the local surfers are a bit used to the sea lions now. It’s all good vibes.”
He said more and more sea lions had been making appearances at St Clair’s in recent years, and the local surfing population was getting to know them well.
“It’s all good, a bit of sea life. I suppose it’s better than a few white-pointers popping up in the line-up.”
Kennington said organisers were well aware they were heading into an environment where wildlife were present, and protocols were in place for the protection of both competitors and animals.
“It’s a little bit scary, and we don’t want to get too close to them either, so just need to have a bit of a protocol in place should they get too aggressive in the water.”
With the possibility of the sealion’s presence disrupting the surfers’ performance, there was a protocol in place to postpone the heat until the water was clear - though this didn’t come into action on the day.
On the second day of the competition, a second sea lion made an appearance but kept things decidedly more lowkey than the other by napping about 300 meters up the beach from the competition before slinking back into the water.
Ben Tomsett is a Multimedia Journalist for the New Zealand Herald, based in Dunedin.
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