#arctocephalus

An Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) with her pups on South Georgia

Australian Fur Seal Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus

It is a subspecies of the brown fur seal found in southern Australia. Australian fur seals are social animals that use vocalizations in a broad range of contexts. These vocalizations have been shown to contain individually unique properties important for enabling individual recognition. This is particularly important for the reunion of mothers and pups that experience repeated separations whilst mothers are out at sea foraging, sometimes for days at a time. Upon their return, mothers need to locate their pups.

Late Cretaceous mudstones and sandstones, and bituminous coal, now eroded into headlands, a convinient natural boat harbour, and multiple unmarked mineshafts which are not convinient at all.

Māori extensively settled the area in the 15th Century, and one important tradition holds that a double-hulled trading canoe ran into a storm off the coast here, with the cargo washed ashore and petrified into the famous Matakaea boulders, and less symmetrical boulders around the point and beachs here. They're mudstone concretions, many of them formed around fossils, and in one case around a eight-meter long elasmosaur.

The point is also noteworthy for plant species more normally found in alpine and subalpine grasslands.

Brown fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus)

Australasian fur seal pups (Arctocephalus forsteri) in Dunedin, Aotearoa

An Australasian fur seal (Arctocephalus forsteri) relaxes in the dunes of Kangaroo Island, Australia