VIDEO: Seal slaps NZ kayaker in face with octopus

A kayaker paddling in the waters around New Zealand had something of a shock when a fur seal smacked him in the face with an octopus.

In a video that was quickly shared around the world, New Zealander Kyle Mulinder is seen kayaking with friends near the town of Kaikoura off the east coast of the South Island.

Mulinder told Australia’s Seven News he and his friends had been watching a seal tussle with a large octopus near their kayaks, before the seal burst out of the water with the animal lodged between its jaws.

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“We were just sitting out in the middle of the ocean and then this huge male seal appeared with an octopus and he was thrashing him about for ages,” Mulinder told the news channel. “I was like ‘mate, what just happened?’ It was weird because it happened so fast but I could feel all the hard parts of the octopus on my face.”

Mulinder “had a camera attached to his boat which captured the bizarre encounter”, says The Guardian.

Mulinder's companion Taiyo Masuda was also testing out a new camera at the time and captured the entire incident, which has been watched almost 7,000 times on Instagram.

“One seal swims right next to us, having an octopus in his mouth, pops right up of the surface next to us, then tries to chew up the leg but ended up slapping our face,” Masuda told AFP.

“Kyle was in the right place at the right time.”

The video shows Mulinder yelling “there's an octopus on my boat” with Masuda responding “no way, that was mental”.

“It was super funny rather than terrifying, we cracked up straight away,” he said.

Seals mainly eat fish, “but they will consume any type of protein they can find, including octopus, squid, crustaceans and shellfish”, explains The Guardian.