Playing with (or was it harrassed by?) a Seal

Mark and I have had harbor seal encounters before on our dives in Monterey, CA. But this past Saturday, was the first time we could characterize our encounter as being "harrassed" by a seal.

Our dives were at McAbee Beach, just off Cannery Row in Monterey. McAbee beach is famous for its playful seals. It is so famous for its seals that after our dives were completed, even our friendly parking lot attendant at McAbee asked us whether we had played with the seals.

Our seal first swam in front of us to get our attention. I wanted to engage the seal, and had read about seals imitating humans after doing barrel rolls. So I attempted to do a barrel roll in the water to entertain the seal. The seal reacted by becoming shy for an instant, and meandered behind a rock to hide. We of course knew where it was hiding and snuck up upon it. Upon being found, it looked up at us slyly before surfacing for air. After this little game of hide and seek, the seal no longer felt any shyness and released an onslaught of harrassment our way.

This juvenile seal not only nipped at our fins, but muzzled our bodies. It came right up to our masks, with its eyes just inches away from ours, much like in the picture above. The seal kept exploring our masks with its claws and nuzzling our hoods with its nose. The seal was particularly interested in clawing at Mark's tank, whereupon Mark would turn around in dismay, and I would chuckle into my regulator. To keep its interest at one point, I offered it my dive slate (mmm, yummy). It quickly went straight for my pencil and nuzzled it a bit. When I reached and rubbed its belly, the seal wasn't fazed. Through my neoprene gloves, its belly felt more jiggly and soft than I had anticipated. At one point, the seal and I were getting so friendly, that we were holding hands as though we were dancing. The video below from another diver at McAbee pretty much characterizes the type of experience we had.



After 15 minutes of this, we had to head to shore, otherwise I would have liked to experiment with playing fetch with the seal, maybe with a piece of kelp. My friend, Dr. Bill from Catalina, said he once conducted an entire dive playing fetch with a seal.

Even without our seal visit, our dives were awesome, characterized by good visibility, and a couple of other unusual marine life sightings (rare orange adult wolf eel sighting, and my first Dirona albolineata nudibranch).


Dive #1 (cumulative dive #161): McAbee Beach
Max Depth: 38 feet
Time: 0:53 hour
Buddy: Mark
Temperature: ?? didn't look
Visibility: 40+ feet past the first kelp bed
Weight worn: 24 lbs (10 in BCD, 14 on weight belt)
Mark's weight: 24 lbs

Observations:

• Mark spotted an adult, orange wolf eel. According to Humann's fish ID book, this coloration is rare.
• Mark spotted a Dirona Albolineata nudibranch (see right). They are as luminescent and glowing in real life as they are in the photos.
• Conducted an official REEF fish count on my own for the first time, and it was a lot of fun.
  

Dive #2 (cumulative dive #162): McAbee Beach

Max Depth: 33 feet
Time: 0:42 hour
Buddy: Mark
Temperature: ??
Visibility: 25+ feet
Weight worn: 24 lbs (10 in BCD, 14 on weight belt)

After our dives, Mark and I had lunch at the Trailside Cafe overlooking McAbee Beach, where we gorged ourselves on clam chowder and fish and chips. I then insisted that we visit the Monterey "World Famous" Wax Museum for the first time. This Wax Museum had scenes from Monterey's past history, and even featured scenes from John Steinbeck's novels. At the Wax Museum, I learned that Monterey had changed hands from the Native Americans, to the Spaniards, to the Mexicans before becoming American land. I also learned that McAbee Beach, the site of our dives, used to be squatted upon by numerous Chinese immigrants back during Cannery Row's hey day.