Friendly harbour seal

It's been two weeks since I posted here; an unplanned break, partly due to health issues (nothing to worry about; an old injury flaring up and ruining my days, keeping me awake nights. It will pass.) And just plain discouragement. Sometimes it feels wrong to celebrate the beauty and immense variety of the world around us while it I watch it go down in fear and flames. As if I hadn't noticed. But I have, and I'm grieving.

But. Quitting never accomplished anything. And all may not be lost. Maybe.

Today a towhee came and pearched in the pear tree for a while, and a hummingbird hovered around the feeder. And I moved furniture and discovered three (3!) spiders and a sowbug, after weeks of never seeing any little beasties. I went down to the shore, and the cormorants were parked on their rock in the watery sunlight; the trees were stark against a pearly sky, and the water shimmered. Life goes on, and it is good.

So I'm back, in time for Christmas.

I went to get fresh sea water for my tank, at the closest boat launch. It is two long docks enclosed in a breakwater of huge rocks. In the circle, the water was calm, although just outside, the changing tide was making waves. As I carried my buckets down to the end of the dock, a harbour seal popped his head up to look at me. I froze, and he went down, came up a bit closer, ducked under again, and came right up to within a couple of metres away to get a good look at me.

At a distance.

I could almost touch him.

But something was wrong. His right eye was closed. Mostly, when he came up to look at me again, he turned the left side towards me. He kept ducking down, coming up again, on one side of the dock, then the other, always watching me.

With half his head underwater, he has a very doggy look about him, like the lab next door.

A family came in in their boat, and the seal went down. I collected my water and loaded it into the car. When I looked back, the family was still getting their stuff out of the boat, but the seal was back, watching them.

I mentioned this to one of the men. He said, "He's hoping you have food for him." I gathered from this that the seal is a regular. And fisherfolk come in here, gut and behead their fish, and dump the heads into the water. A good reason to hang around if your eyesight isn't all that great for underwater hunting.

I went down to the dock again. The seal came back to look me over.

Here, he gives me a look at his damaged eye. And his front flippers, constantly in motion.

Underwater, beside the dock.

It looks like the eye opens slightly underwater. Not all the way, but the white and a bit of the iris show up. The other one looks brown underwater; above, it looks black.

View as he goes under the dock under my feet. Hind flippers and coat pattern.

Another loop, speeding this time. Nice whiskers!

I watched for a while, then said goodbye. As I got into my car, up on the approach, I looked back. He was sitting up in the water close to the shore, with his neck stretched tall, watching me.

I wished I were a fisher, so I could bring him a fish.

View of the outer dock and the breakwater, while the seal waited for the fisherpeople to drag their boat out of the water. You can see him there; two lumps. He's just resting, waiting.