Gray seals have been spotted hunting down and killing dolphins. Hizglebe - stock.adobe.com Is their fate seal-ed?
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. UK seals have been expanding their palate in a gruesome way by chowing down on dolphins and porpoises, sparking fears that we could be next on the menu.
“It’s like entering a fast food restaurant,” for them,” said Dr. Sophie Brasseur, a marine mammal expert at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, while describing the unusual dietary choice the Telegraph reported.
While only a few instances of grey seals preying on porpoises or dolphins have been observed, recent incidents have prompted concerns that the behavior could be becoming more commonplace.
In February, a mangled dolphin carcass washed ashore in Pembrokeshire, marking the first recorded instance of its species getting killed by these blubbery buccaneers in Welsh waters. Wildlife specialists were tipped off by the corkscrew-shaping markings on the cetacean’s body, which had been stripped to the innards by its assailants, believed to be a gang of grays.
Meanwhile, a common dolphin was spotted between the jaws of the off a pinniped in the Irish sea in January with a total of 20 potential dolphin-hunters identified in the British Isles.
This practice has understandably raised alarm bells among the residents of these coastal spots. Megan Harris, a waitress at the Landsker Line cafe in Newgale, recalled the “horrible” moment when she saw a dolphin wash ashore with its entrails hanging out — which investigators speculated was the handiwork of a seal.
This has raised concerns that humans could be next in the crosshairs. “If they can do that to a dolphin, they can obviously do that to a human as well,” fretted the Brit, who regularly swims in the ocean.
Meanwhile, the restaurant’s owner, Mike Harris, said they’re “big” with huge teeth and he wouldn’t “trust them.”
Even just taking a nip can be bad news, given the cesspool of bacteria these fish-eaters harbor in their sharp teeth. Cliff Benson, 71, founder of Sea Trust Wales, said that their mouths are so dirty that victims will often have their fingers amputated rather than bandaging them, adding that he knows several people with parts of their digits missing.
Despite their formidable dental hardware, seal-on-dolphin predation might seem atypical given the perception of the latter as super-smart beings that can even hold their own against sharks. Seals, meanwhile, are often viewed as roly-poly water frolickers, perhaps most associated with balancing balls at marine animal shows.
However, the size contrast is stark. Adult male gray seals can grow to ten feet long and weigh nearly 900 pounds while common dolphins grow to eight feet and weigh around 350 pounds max.
Experts suspect that this behavior was learned by the seals who may have developed a taste for blubber after they preyed on their own kind. Just like grizzly bears, male gray seals are known to kill their own young in an effort to prolong the breeding season while intra-species cannibalism has soared over the past decade, according to studies.
Throw in the boom of both dolphin and seal numbers — the latter of which soared from 500 to 120,000 in the UK over the past century — and it’s perhaps no wonder that seals are treating themselves to this interspecies buffet.
How do they chase down and catch their comparatively quicker and more agile quarry? Experts suspect that they target the young or injured dolphins in shallower waters off the Welsh Coast, where they’ve been increasingly pushed as commercial trawlers deplete their prey further out at sea.
Mat Westfield, co-ordinator at the Marine Environmental Monitoring, said he suspects they will teach their brethren how to dine on dolphin and we will see “more and more” of this unusual predation in the future.
As for people, our fate is likely not yet seal-ed. In fact, there has only been one recorded case of a seal killing a human — when UK marine biologist Kirsty Brown was drowned by a leopard seal while surveying the Antarctic Peninsula in 2003.
That being said, several people in California have been mauled by sea lions whose minds have become “warped” by toxic algae plaguing the coast.
During one such incident last spring, surfer Rj LaMendola was savaged by an algae-addled pinniped, which punctured his hand, shredded his wetsuit and chomped his “left butt cheek.”
“Today, I endured the most harrowing and traumatic experience of my 20 years of surfing,” wrote the wave-shredder on Facebook while recalling the harrowing attack.
