Octopus slap was real deal
It was the slap that grabbed global media attention and, inevitably, some doubters.
The headlines around the world read ‘‘Seal slaps kayaker in the face with an octopus’’ – one publication even went as far as to call the octopus ‘‘gigantic’’.
Motueka-based Go Pro ambassador Kyle Mulinder said the days following the video of him with a face full of octopus flung by a seal as he kayaked off Kaikoura were a ‘‘tsunami of craziness’’.
‘‘It’s still going. I don’t know who’s going to call me next.’’
The Bare Kiwi travel videographer warded off emails, calls and hundreds of messages to his Instagram, having to delete them all because he just ‘‘couldn’t keep up’’ with the buzz around the incident.
‘‘Within the first day I had the New York Times, the BBC, every single radio station in New Zealand and around the world and Australian breakfast TV shows. I don’t know who, or where, or what, it just kept going.’’
However, one ‘‘Aucklandbased millennial’’ reporter ruined it for other journalists. ‘‘This kid just kept going on about how I work for Go Pro and it was a set-up. It was like he was digging for something. That guy wound me up. I actually stopped taking questions after that.’’
Mulinder said people had asked many times, ‘‘So was it actually a set-up?’’ In short, no. ‘‘So weird. How would you even do that?’’
The kayaking adventure in Kaiko¯ ura was to test out a new Go Pro. He had watched the seal and octopus thrash it out for a while before becoming part of the action. He felt ‘‘all the hard parts of the octopus on my face’’.
Thirty Go Pro ambassadors from New Zealand and Australia met in Christchurch before splitting into teams and going in all directions of the South Island including the West Coast, Abel Tasman, Marlborough, Southland and Queenstown. Mulinder was team leader for a group that went to Hanmer and Kaiko¯ ura.