The man told the seagull to stay away from his "shit" or he would break its neck.
WARNING: Video may be distressing to some.
A TikTok video of a man holding a struggling seagull by its neck has prompted a complaint to the Department of Conservation.
The video, posted to the popular social media app earlier this week, shows a man sitting on a fishing boat and holding the seagull around the neck and throat as it flaps and struggles to escape.
He has a tray across his lap where he appears to have been filleting raw fish.
The man tells the seagull to “leave my f***ing s**t alone . . . or I’ll break your neck” before the video abruptly ends. Other men can be heard chuckling in the background.
The caption reads “how to let off steam after a long day off [sic] fishing”.
The video has amassed more than 300,000 views, 30,000 likes and 380 comments - many of which appear to be jokes.
“He’s like ‘damn bro I’m hungry too’” wrote one person.
“Only way to handle this situation,” said another.
“I’d do the same thing,” said another person. Many of the comments contained laughing emojis.
But one TikTok user, identified only as Tessa, was disgusted by the video.
She sent a copy of it to the Department of Conservation (DoC), calling for the man involved to be punished.
“I’ve come across this video on the video app ‘TikTok’ showing a male on a boat holding a red-billed seagull being grabbed and held in a manner obviously causing harm to it,” she wrote in her email, which she also sent to various media.
“I’m sure you’ll see I’ve copied a couple of news agencies into this email to ensure this gets the publicity it needs and hopefully a punishment for this male as this behaviour towards our native wildlife should not be tolerated.”
The red-billed gull or tarāpunga is a protected native species in New Zealand under the Wildlife Act 1953, making it illegal to kill or harm them. It is also a taonga species for some iwi.
“As red-billed gulls are commonly seen in coastal areas, many people don’t realise that their numbers are declining nationally. The species currently has a conservation status of ‘at-risk: declining’,” a DoC spokesman said after an earlier incident in which a gull was shot with a crossbow.
Nationally there are fewer than 100,000 red-billed gulls left and over the next 30 years, their numbers are expected to fall by between 50 to 70 per cent.
DoC declined to comment on the current case over the weekend, with a spokesman confirming they would look into the matter on Monday.
DoC has previously spoken out after a different TikTok video showed a man in Dunedin clutching one of the gulls before throwing it into the air.
“It is stressful for the animal whenever someone catches and holds our native birds like this,” said DoC Otago operations manager Annie Wallace at the time.
The person who posted the most recent video has not responded to a message from the Herald.
It is the second incident of cruelty to marine life in as many weeks, with a video of a pregnant shark being cut open alive in Christchurch causing horrified responses from the public on New Year’s Day.
The incident, which happened on New Brighton Beach, involved a mature school shark that was dragged from the shallows up onto the beach.
A video of the incident, posted to Facebook, shows the shark arching and thrashing in pain as its belly is sliced open, allowing dozens of live baby sharks to spill out onto the sand.
Members of the public helped return the pups to the water, but a witness said most of them were quickly picked off by seagulls.
Witness Adele Ross said she tried to intervene and tell one of the men involved to put the shark out of its misery, but was labelled an “activist” and “pathetic woman” for her efforts.
While school sharks are not a protected species, killing one in such a manner is a breach of the Animal Welfare Act.
A Ministry from Primary Industries spokesman said Fisheries New Zealand would be working to contact the people who slaughtered the shark and remind them of their obligations under the act.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
