Diver stabs sea lion which ‘threatened to attack’ wife: ‘I poked it lots of times with no effect, it needed a stab’

‘This was no ordinary playful sea lion,’ man says

Sea lions are endangered and protected by law in New Zealand (AFP via Getty)

A man who stabbed a sea lion while diving in New Zealand has said he needed to defend his wife from the “beserk” animal after it followed them for 30 minutes.

Matt Kraemer claimed the “aggressive” sea lion “threatened to attack” his partner Jo Kraemer on a Dunedin beach and “needed a stab”.

The couple were diving for paua – a type of edible sea snail – off the coast of New Zealand’s South Island when they encountered the endangered creature on Friday.

Mr Kraemer later wrote on Facebook: “Today I learned why sea lions are called lions. A particularly aggressive one harassed me with lion-sized jaws for the entire 30 minute swim back to the beach.

“It actually climbed out of the water and threatened to attack on the beach. I had to stab it with a spear to defend my terrified dive buddy.”

After facing criticism for wounding the animal, he added: “This was no ordinary playful sea lion. I poked it lots of times with no effect, it needed a stab. It will live.”

Mr Kraemer said the sea lion had been “attacking on the land, only half a metre away from Jo and we were already exhausted after half an hour defending ourselves from it”.

His wife said the animal was more than two-metres long and “kept biting my fins and swooping past snapping its jaws in my face”.

“By the time I got on the beach I lost a fin and it was lunging at me,” Ms Kraemer added. “Matt was just defending me. He had been very tolerant up to that point.”

She said she was “a bit scared to go back in” the water following the ordeal.

But the New Zealand Sea Lion Trust said it was “never OK to a harm a sea lion because you’re scared”.

“While we can appreciate that this individual was scared and felt he was acting defensively, none of the behaviours demonstrated by the sea lion suggest aggression to us,” it added in a statement.

The trust’s former chair, Steve Broni, said the sea lion Mr Kraemer speared had probably been “bluff charging” – a tactic used to ward off a perceived threat.

“Across Dunedin and Otago, nobody has ever been mauled by a New Zealand sea lion,” he told the Otago Daily Times.

The New Zealand sea lion is classed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which estimates only 3,031 adults remain in the wild.

The species is protected by law in New Zealand, where anyone who injuries a marine mammal can face two years in prison or a fine of up to $250,000 (£128,000).

Police have said Mr Kraemer is not under investigation.