The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note 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 5, 2014
Salish Sea, PNW
Had an unexpected sighting of a golden giant - a Steller SeaLion - and even more unexpected, his encounter with a fish! My question at the time was Did he get his meal, or was it a miss? I had to look at my photos to find out. Follow me below the tangled kelp to see what they showed...
(All photos by me. In Lightbox...click to enlarge)
Regular Bucket readers may remember the occasion I reported a few weeks ago when I passed by the SeaLion haul-out at Whale Rocks where quite a few males spend the summer. Got some nice looks of them lounging, napping and roaring at each other.
This time I was on a walk, on land nearby, hoping to see Heermann's gulls. These are summer gulls here, and I knew the departure for their breeding grounds in the Sea of Cortez was imminent. I did see lots of them, though they were mostly resting on Deadman Rocks across this narrow side channel. There were seals in the water but I gather the gulls knew the seals weren't seriously fishing, else they'd have been diving at them to steal their food. They did all lift off once, flew around for a few minutes but then resettled themselves on a different rock.
That was pretty cool, and I sat there for an hour or so watching them, the seals, oystercatchers and other birds. I had packed up and was just taking leave when I saw a much larger presence down in the water. Plunging. Mouth open. SeaLion!
I stopped where I was. Lunch would have a SeaLion delay. Unfortunately, he was to my left, with the sun in my face. Silhouette. Oh well.
I saw these big pinnipeds fishing at this particular site a year ago but not again. I learned they mostly feed at night, using their long sensitive whiskers to find prey in the dark, which is the reason they are usually seen lounging and roaring during the day time or cruising through deep water away from shore. On that occasion last year I used a point-and-shoot camera and felt lucky to get any photos at all with the time lag between exposures. After that I got myself a DSLR camera to be able to catch better photos of wildlife in motion, since to me that's the most interesting thing about wildlife observation: seeing what they do to make a living in nature.
Then out of the corner of my eye I saw motion and a flash of white. I swung around - luckily now the sun was behind me! - and pushed a button, the camera taking a series of photos in quick succession while I watched the live action with my other eye. In an instant, the fish had disappeared and the SeaLion had dived. Had he succeeded in capturing that slimy wiggling creature? or was this one of many unsuccessful fishing attempts?
Along with persistence and luck, having a decent tool makes it possible to learn all kinds of things about wildlife never possible otherwise. Here's what showed up in the download, the first pic grabbed while I was still turning, lol :)
This happened in 3 seconds according to the time stamps. It looks to me like the fish went down his gullet, head first, swallowed whole. Good size meal!
Considering that these male SeaLions (Eumetopias jubatus), 10' long and a hefty 1500 lbs, need to consume 5% of their body weight per day to survive, he'll be doing more fishing before tomorrow. This fish looks like a salmon, and based on the recreational fishing reports this fall, what's most common out there now are the Coho aka Silver salmon. SeaLions eat whatever there is available: if a particular kind of salmon is abundant that's what they eat, and if salmon are scarce they'll eat something else.
Stomach samples and feces (scat) samples indicate sea lions prey upon a wide selection of fishes including capelin, sandlance, pollock, herring, cod, salmon, flatfishes, sculpins, squid, octopus and occasionally seal pups. - source
SeaLions get scapegoated for depleting salmon populations even though the reality is that it is
human activities that are relentlessly wiping out salmon and the food supply for salmon. How cool this beautiful wild animal was lucky enough to find one!
Likely the reason this golden giant had drifted over here from Whale Rocks was to take advantage of an especially fast-running tide. Fish get stirred up by the currents which makes them easier to catch.
I waited a while to see what this fellow would do, but he took several deep breaths, exhaling showers of spray, and dived out of sight, heading into the current, back south toward the haul-out.
Isn't he a beauty!
Thursday Oct 9
The fog has descended big time since I made those observations. Here's what it looked like today out there, at a slack tide...
...but I'm hoping to find another occasion of sunlight and strong current at the Rocks before the SeaLions depart for their rookeries on the coast. I might get lucky.
~
Nature news in your natural neighborhood? Departures or arrivals? What activity do you see?
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