Not all glamour!

Just to show you that this fellowship is NOT all glamour, three times this last few weeks Callum and I have been called on to dispose of dead New Zealand fur seals. Quite how these ones have died is a mystery. Sometimes they have obvious fatal wounds, from boats or sharks, but more often there is little visible cause. Often when there has been rough weather more seals seem to die. They are also (definitely in this case) often quite decomposed, and there is very little worse than a rotten seal! This particular seal had a tag on its flipper, and I am looking forward to finding out more about it!

Callum and I rolled this one onto a tarpaulin, and then onto the ute, and headed to a farm on Frankley Road, where it was disposed of in an offal pit. Usually dead seals and dolphins are left to rot where they are washed up, but if they are in very public areas they are removed. The New Zealand fur seal has gone from the brink of extinction to being a common sight around the New Zealand coast.