Photos of a seal attacking an octopus on the Far South Coast are doing the rounds on social media.
The images taken on board a cruise in Eden by Sophia of SQ Snaps, show the seal with the large Octopus in its mouth, swinging it above the water.
Skipper with Cat Balou Cruises, Brad Wills, witnessed the attack over the weekend.
“Twofold Bay is normally full of wildlife and we’re seeing lots of whales at the moment including humpbacks and we’ve had Southern Right’s hanging around for over a week and lots of dolphins,” Mills said.
“This day we just happened to see a little bit of splashing in the water, so we thought we’d go over and have a look and noticed a seal had just caught a fresh octopus for himself,”he said.
“As we got closer we realised how large this octopus was, one of our crew members is a marine biologist, Hannah, who identified it as a Maori Octopus.
“Apparently they hang out around New Zealand and Southern NSW and can grow up to 9kgs and up to 3 metres long.
“This wasn’t a full grown one but it was still pretty big and the seal was flinging it around and having a great time with it and we were lucky enough to have one of our great friends Sophia who’s an avid photographer with us, who got some fantastic shots of it.
Wills went on to say it’s not uncommon for these type of attacks to happen.
“It’s fairly common for this kind of thing to happen but this was a little bit different considering the size of the octopus that the seal had managed to catch,” Wills said.
“I think it would have sorted him out for lunch and for dinner as well.”
The Skipper said the large Maori Octopus put up a fight.
“The octopus certainly wouldn’t have gone down easy,” Wills said.
“There’s research to suggest that these octopuses have actually suffocated dolphins before when dolphins have tried to eat them.”
Images: Sophia of SQ Snaps
