Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina)

Subadult male, Kaikoura, 3 June 2015

Elephant Seals are a fairly regular vagrant to NZ coasts from the subantarctic, but they always seem to appear where-ever I am not! This time I got lucky and this young male arrived on the Kaikoura coast, a couple of hours north of my location. He was first seen on Friday, and today (Wednesday) I managed to get up there to try and find him.

Brilliant animal! So much more amazing in person than I would have imagined.