The World Surf League event in New Zealand was abruptly halted on finals day after a photographer was bitten by a sea creature.

Australian Ed Sloane was attacked just before 8.30am while documenting the men’s semi-finals at the New Zealand Pro, held near Raglan on the west coast of the North Island.

The competition was halted 10 minutes in and Brazilian surfers Yago Dora and Italo Ferreira were extracted from the water on jet skis.

“It’s the first time we have activated code red,” Renato Hickel, vice president of tours and competition, said on the WSL broadcast.

“This time it was our beloved water photographer Ed. Thank God he’s in good spirits. He’s well considering what happened.”

Hickel said the photographer had suffered minor puncture wounds from a bite and had been taken to hospital.

“At this stage we are not certain if it was a shark or a sea lion – the doctor on the scene was inclined to think it was a sea lion – nevertheless, very scary.”

In a statement, Sloane thanked people for the well wishes and said he was “doing okay”.

“I’ve had bites to my left foot and am getting medical attention. Massive thank you to our water patrol for the quick response, our medical team and all the support from our teams for the immediate assistance I received,” he said.

“I love this place and can’t wait to watch an epic Finals Day. Cheering for everyone for a great finish to the event.”

The event was put on hold until further assessments were made.

“The safety of our staff and competitors are our priority, and we will provide updates as further information becomes available,” WSL said in a statement.

Organisers were looking to resume Dora and Ferreira’s heat on Monday afternoon.

“Italo and Yago are obviously shaken, they saw the splash and the incident, so another reason to put the event on hold.”

It comes 11 years after Australian surf great Mick Fanning fought off a shark attack during competition at J-Bay in South Africa, an incident that was captured on live television.

The New Zealand Pro is the largest surf event New Zealand has hosted and hundreds of spectators lined Manu Bay to watch the competition. Attacks on surfers and swimmers in the region are extremely rare.

Four child-sized humanoid robots take the stage at an arena in eastern Seoul, and as the opening beats of a song by K-pop star G-Dragon begin, they start to dance.

Arms swinging, legs stepping in sync, heads bobbing, wigs and baggy clothes swishing, until – mid-performance – one of them seemingly malfunctions and has to be removed from the stage.

Welcome to Galaxy Robot Park, a new 16,500 square metre facility in Gangdong district that its creators claim is the world’s first robot theme park.

It represents an ambitious – some might say audacious – vision of a future in which robots don’t just assist humans but entertain them, perform concerts across continents simultaneously, and even walk runways.

Behind the project is Galaxy Corporation, an entertainment company that positions itself as an “enter-tech” firm, blending entertainment with technology.

It manages megastar G-Dragon, as well as Taemin from the group Shinee and actor Song Kang-ho, known to western audiences for his role as the father in Parasite.

K-pop has long served as a testing ground for experimental tech, from SM Entertainment’s Aespa, which pairs real members with virtual avatars, to fully virtual boybands like Plave.

At the opening show, the robots execute their moves with surprising fluidity across a repertoire of different songs, including G-Dragon’s Home Sweet Home and Taemin’s Advice and Idea.

“We’re planning three to six K-pop concerts daily, over 1,000 shows annually,” Choi Yong-ho, Galaxy’s chief executive and self-styled “chief happiness officer”, tells reporters. “By the end of this year, We’re planning to take them on a world tour.”

Cha Woo-jin, a music critic and industry analyst, is wary of whether audiences will embrace the shows around the world, but sees the ambitious plan as both a cultural and economic experiment. “If you put a robot in an Elvis museum, fans would be repulsed,” he says. “But K-pop is a visual packaging model, so robots feel less alien.”

A robot tour, he says, would be like a cover dance crew – the groups that replicate routines of famous K-pop performers – but without hotel bills or per diems.

Beyond the arena, the park offers various robot experiences. Robot valets welcomed guests at the door. Others, including robotic dogs, roam around the outdoor areas playing with visitors.

A robotic arm with a face attachment draws my portrait, chatting with me while it works. The result is highly accurate, but I feel it make me looks older than I am.

Up the hill, there’s also a boxing ring where visitors can control humanoid fighters through a mirroring system, watching their movements replicated in real time as the machines battle each other.

At one point a punch makes a glove fly off into the crowd. One robot falls off the stage, but recuperates and gets back into action.

Galaxy also plans to stage what it calls the world’s first robot fashion show in late May, followed by the launch of a robot fashion label. Choi offers few details about how exactly robots will model clothing or what a robot fashion brand might entail.

The broader vision involves deploying K-pop performing robots to places where human stars cannot easily travel, including war zones. Once choreography is programmed into one robot, all robots worldwide can instantly learn and perform it, enabling concurrent shows across multiple countries.

The real question for music critic Cha, is whether robots can replicate K-pop’s essential ingredient: emotional connection with fans. “That will determine if this is a genuine cultural shift or just a novelty show.”