The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note of any observations you have made of the world around you. Rain, sun, wind...insects, birds, flowers...meteorites, rocks...seasonal changes...all are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
October 25, 2013 Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
I had an unusual and very cool experience this afternoon. Got a few photos, but mostly Mr O and I were just playing with a seal for about an hour out in Barlow Bay. Or you might say it was playing with us!
We went out to check on our sailboat since it turned into a SUNNY afternoon, a radical change from the weather we've been having for the last...well, it seems like forever...several weeks of dense dark dripping wet fog, an unprecedented weather pattern caused by a strong ridge of high pressure and an inversion. Our local weather guru has been explaining it, but for us at sea level, that ghostly endless fog has just felt weird. We even took a hike up to the highest point on the island to get out of the fog one day.
Sun! We could see! and feel the warmth. Threw the kayaks in the back of the truck, drove over to the bay, and put in. Mr O went aboard the sailboat to do some regular maintenance, and I drifted across the bay, enjoying the flat calm water reflecting poofy white clouds, watching the cormorants on the pilings...and then I felt a nudge.
Looked around and there was a Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina), probably a female or a youngster, as it was on the small side, her head barely above the water, behind me, looking.
And maybe listening. Seals hear extremely well in water - very likely she'd heard me paddling from a ways off underwater - but they can hear in air too. I noted that when Navy jets roared by later several times, and I had to stick my fingers in my ears, she remained safely underwater for the duration of that deafening noise.
Seals frequently swim up behind kayakers, curious I guess, check us out and then swim away. This seal was different. She stuck with me when I paddled a ways, and then swam directly underneath my kayak, scratching her belly along the bottom, then gliding away behind. Tagged you!
I had to keep swiveling my head, and reversing the kayak to get a view of her, because she very clearly wanted to play where I couldn't see. She was so close I could have reached out and touched her for a moment, but she kept slipping through the water, about 5 feet and 250 pounds of muscular power. When she'd come up to breathe I'd hear it, and know where she was. Sometimes she sneezed. I spoke to her in wee-folk language as best I know how,
Hello pretty one..., wanting to connect with that quiet mysterious intelligence. She may have responded, but I am too dense or alien to understand her.
We played a game: I'd position the kayak to bring her in view in front of me, and she maneuvered to stay behind...she'd win if she managed to swim completely underneath the boat and come up behind me. I tried backing the kayak up against the rocks so she couldn't get behind. She just waited, watching me. See her extraordinary eyes.
If I didn't actively paddle, the kayak would drift out into deeper water, and then there she was. She variously nudged the stern, rubbed the length of her body along the bottom, and swam by underneath. I was hanging the camera out over the side hoping to catch her picture. This is what I managed.
Her vision is better underwater than above, but she knew which way I was facing. I even tried paddling backwards, hoping she'd think the bow was the stern, but that didn't fool her at all. Either she could see my face, or was noting features on the bottom of the kayak. Once she came directly up under my extended paddle to examine it. I tried to be careful not to hit her with the paddle when I made a stroke, though most of the time I was just drifting, or ruddering in place.
Mr O completed his work on the sailboat and joined me in his kayak. For a while the seal ignored him, and then she began to play with him too. He was utterly amazed and bemused.
Eventually it was time to go ashore. Unlike the seal, I was feeling the awkward heavy weight of my body, cramped and stiff. A kayak is great for floating within reach of the water, but it's not the free-moving, weightless, sensual immersion in three fluid dimensions that a marine mammal experiences (scuba diving gives me an inkling of that).
The seal followed Mr O as he paddled to the beach, nudging his kayak, and diving playfully around him.
We beached the kayaks and got out. As we gathered them up to stow in the truck across the road, the seal watched us 20 feet out, swimming back and forth.
Hey, why aren't you playing anymore? Is this look a little reproachful? or ?? What
does a seal think and feel, beyond her evident behavior? What are we, to her?
We all delighted in the beautiful warm sunny afternoon, after the days and days of dark. What a remarkable and special experience it was, sharing some joyful play with this seal. It was one of those times I wished I was a sea creature, maybe a selkie, living and playing in the ocean.
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