13 February 2015

Harbor seal vs octopus


Rico's friend Kelley forwards this, by David Strege, about a rare marine fight:
A man and his family walking along Ogden Point in Victoria, Canada, got a rare treat when they noticed the tentacles of an octopus wrapped around a harbor seal. The two marine creatures were doing battle.
“It was unbelievable,” Bob Ianson told CBC News. “That seal is probably, I don’t know, four feet long? So that octopus is a pretty big octopus.” Ianson was with his wife, daughter, and grandson when they saw the fight occurring just feet off the breakwater, drawing a crowd of a couple dozen onlookers. “It was almost like the seal was bringing the octopus up to the surface to show off what he had,” Ianson said.
So, how rare was this?
Vancouver Aquarium research biologist Chad Nordstrom told CBC News that octopus is a regular part of a harbor seal’s diet, so such an encounter would be expected in nature. "Actually capturing it on film is the rare thing,” Nordstrom said. The aquarium only has one photograph of a battle between an octopus and harbor seal, taken by a diver many years ago, Nordstrom told CBC News.
And there was only one other known octopus-harbor seal encounter that occurred off Ogden Point, a few years ago. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ianson told the Times Colonist. “I guess we were just in the right place at the right time.”
Rico says he's seen seals in the water in Monterey Bay in California, but never with an octopus...

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