Horsham’s Patrick Willmore was visiting the seaside village over Easter.

His two children Malaya, 5, and Maddox, 2, asked if they could go down to the river to try and spot the seal.

“My parents have a house in Port Fairy and every time we go there the kids want to go down there and see the seal,” Mr Willmore said.

The family headed towards the fish cleaning facility and was soon greeted by the hungry seal.

A fisherman had caught a mako shark and the seal had his eye on it.

“He was edging his way up the bank,” Mr Willmore said.

“The fisherman cut a fin off and threw it towards the seal, but he didn't want a bar of it, he wanted the shark.”

Mr Willmore said the shocked fisherman tried unsucessfully to shoo him away.

“He tried to shoo it away and it barked at him like a dog,” he said.

At one point the fisherman dropped the shark and had to retrieve it, with the seal in hot pursuit.

Mr Willmore said his children thought it was hilarious.

“They thought it was pretty cool,” he said.

The Department of Environment Land Water and Planning has previously issued a warning about the seal.

Acting manager for resource protection and management Ian Westhorpe warned people to keep their distance from the seal.

He asked them not to feed it.

“We have had a number of reports of the seal aggressively taking fish from anglers around the fish cleaning facility at Port Fairy,” he told The Standard.