Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
October 9, 2017
Earlier this month on an errand-outing, we decided on the spur of the moment to take a walk out to a special rocky shoreline we know. The balmy fall weather was about to close down, we could see clouds building in the west after months of a long dry summer, so we figured — let’s squeeze in a walk before things get stormy and unpredictable. On the principle of “You may see nothing special, but you are certain not to, if you don’t go out and look”, we didn’t expect much. The sky was overcast. It was slack high tide so there wasn’t even a prospect of the crazy swirling currents usually running through this narrow channel that create cool whirpooly patterns, and that bring out the fishing seals, sealions and birds who take advantage of fish confused by unexpected eddies. But still.
As it happened, we stumbled on a magical moment, something I’ve never quite seen before — a seal dancing, apparently for the simple pleasure of it.
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At first we thought it was fishing, as we’ve seen many many times before: diving, swimming after stuff, coming up for a breath, diving again. But this seal was twirling in place, doing three dimensional pirouettes, gracefully arching its back, spinning up and down and sideways. It had been for a half an hour already according to a guy hiking out who stopped to chat as we were watching.
We weren't the only ones who could tell Seal wasn’t fishing. One way to know where a seal or sealion is diving is to watch for the gulls — masterful kleptoparasitic hunters. They can find a seal fishing from far above and congregate quickly, overwhelming it when it surfaces, as it must to breathe periodically, at which times they’ll dive bomb en masse.
As an example of this: we were out in the boat recently and saw such a scrum of gulls in the distance. Training my zoom camera on the screaming circling riot I caught a glimpse of one poor seal with part of a salmon clutched in its jaws — clearly gulls had already torn the end of it away and others were trying for more. The last I saw of them was the seal diving again and the gulls dispersing temporarly. Hopefully the seal got away with some portion of the fish.
So why weren’t gulls interested in the dancing seal? They were lurking above another seal just outside the kelp bed from where it was. Seal paused for a moment to watch them. The gulls knew it was there, and ignored it.
The Dancing Seal was quite aware of everything going on around, including human watchers on the cliff. There was no sign anything was wrong. This seal didn’t act injured, sick or anxious. Quite relaxed and leisurely. Strong and agile. Magnificently in tune with its world.
Seal was not concerned about our presence at all. Generally seals keep an eye on people, and maintain some distance. Evidently this pocket of quiet sea between the cliff and kelp bed was where it wanted to dance.
Most of the time Seal was fully immersed. Water is their favorite place to be. On land seals are slow and awkward. Couldn’t be more different in the sea.
As a concession to their mammalian nature, seals surface when necessary. But even then they are more sleek and graceful than any human could be.
Why was Seal dancing? Whiling away the slack tide until prime fishing time rolled around? Enjoying the sunshine? I wish I knew. Likely never will.
We sat there watching for half an hour at least as the seal continued to dance. The tide began to come in, the current picking up as we left. I could see other hikers stopping to watch the Dancing Seal too. Every single one of us had huge delighted smiles.
You may see nothing special in nature, but you certainly won’t if you don’t take a look. The more often you go out into the natural world, however small and modest a corner, the more likely you are to stumble on a magical moment, a perfect flower, a brilliant visiting pollinator, a sudden mushroom, the croak of a frog or a distant hoot, a passing cloud or scent… who knows.
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What have you seen recently in your natural neighborhood?
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