Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
September 2017
It might not have come up yet, but if it does, you’ll want to be prepared: how to properly eat a freshly caught raw BIG fish. Luckily I got a tutorial recently, and will share it with you.
First, you find a table. Usually River Otters just surface with their catch and munch it down floating there before diving back down for the next fish or crab. But when their prize is too big for that, they need a solid surface to dispatch and dismember it.
This Otter considered using the beach but saw a good-size flock of gulls down the way, and picked this rock a little ways out, surrounded by water there being a medium high tide, with a ledge on the far side for privacy. When the tide’s higher it’s a breeze climbing on board, but this time Otter had to choose the easiest spot to climb up onto the ledge.
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The Fish is far enough out of the water so we can see what it is: a Staghorn Sculpin (www.fishbase.org/...), a really big one, about a foot long. When threatened, these sculpins raise their "horns” behind their eyes. They are shallow-water bottomfish, hunting small invertebrates, staying hidden in seaweed or eelgrass, relatively slow for a fish. However bottomish and crabs are Otter’s favorite foods.
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It took Otter about 15 minutes to completely consume this fish, which I estimate is probably about 2-3 lbs. Adult otters (wdfw.wa.gov/…, www.otter-world.com/...) need to eat about 6 lbs of fish a day, so this big old sculpin must have been very satisfying meal for Otter.
So that’s how you otter feast on a great big sculpin fish. Yum!
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Nature news in your backyard today?