Home invasions and roadblocks: New Zealand on alert as ‘seal silly season’ begins

Sunbathing on roads, breaking through catflaps, visiting film sets, invading homes and taking in the heat of backyard spa bath covers – New Zealand’s “seal silly season” has officially begun and the country is bracing for an influx of adolescent marine mammals exploring the country’s highways, patios and golf courses.

This week, the government issued a formal public notice that “seal season” had begun – and New Zealanders could expect to encounter higher numbers of the flippered young creatures out and about, exploring human-dominated spaces. From May until December,

adult males and freshly weaned pups from New Zealand’s growing fur seal population will leave their breeding colonies and head out into the wider world – many for the first time. They’re young, inexperienced and prone to adolescent misbehaviour and mishaps, hitting the wider world en masse like a cohort of fresh-minted spring breakers.

“I call it seal silly season,” says Prof Louise Chilvers, an ecologist specialising in marine wildlife at Massey University. “It’s like having a teenager being kicked out of the home – they don’t quite know what to do, don’t quite know where to feed, don’t quite know what to do with themselves. They’ve got all this freedom, so they go do a bit of exploring,” she says. “Especially in the middle of winter, it’s cold, and there’s lots of nice warm places – like right in the middle of a tar seal road where it’s held all its heat from the day.”

Last year, one young seal broke into a home via the catflap, hung out on the couch and spent several hours traumatising the family cat before being es