Neil the elephant seal has been sleeping in the middle of Tasmanian roads and attacking bollards with his bulk. He weighs about 1,000kg, and wildlife officials now say the real danger is the people who come to look at him.
“We have seen examples around the world where large, potentially dangerous animals have had to be euthanised if there is risky behaviour by the public, resulting in an unmanageable safety concern,” Dr Kris Carlyon, head of wildlife health at the state’s natural resources department, said on Thursday. There was a real risk, he said, of the public “essentially loving Neil to death”.
Some visitors have carried their babies up close for a photo. Carlyon said people were “simply trying to get that shot for Instagram”. Others have left food for the seal. He does not need it and will not eat it.
Fame cuts both ways
“Neil’s fame is a bit of a double-edged sword,” Carlyon said. The attention raises awareness of a threatened species and helps protect him in some ways. It also draws people trying to get a selfie, or just a little closer.
Carlyon pointed to a warning from overseas. Freya the walrus was euthanised in Norway in 2022 after officials judged her a “persistent threat to human security”. They had told the public to keep away, and the warnings were ignored. In Neil’s case, relocation is an option if things get worse, but Carlyon called it risky and a last resort.
A big animal, with a lot of growing left
Neil is a southern elephant seal, born in Tasmania in October 2020. That makes him unusual. Most of his kind live thousands of kilometres south, on the subantarctic Macquarie and Heard islands. Dr Clive McMahon, an elephant seal expert, said Neil thinks Tasmania is home because he does not know where Macquarie Island is. “And he doesn’t have a map.”
This is his 12th return to southern Tasmania. He is on land for about six weeks to rest after a busy feeding period in the Southern Ocean. He could eventually reach 3,500kg and about 4.5 metres.
Dr Jane Younger, a seal expert at the University of Tasmania, did not soften it. “He’s already at a size now where he’s dangerous,” she said. “Even if he’s not in an aggressive mood, he could easily kill a person. They have a big mouth, big teeth, you could get very seriously injured.”
Carlyon described a large marine predator, not a cuddly one. “We certainly wouldn’t be approaching things like polar bears [and] bison in other parts of the world,” he said. Neil is not inherently aggressive, he added, but “he’ll certainly defend his space, and if he feels threatened he may lash out”.
The advice is to stay at least 20 metres away, or 50 metres with a dog, and never get between the seal and the water.
Sources
- Tasmanians warned of ‘loving Neil to death’ as 1,000kg seal’s antics feed ‘double-edged sword’ of fame
- Tasmania’s one‑tonne troublemaker prompts calls for caution
