METRO VANCOUVER – Minutes after she escaped from a harbour seal that had pulled her into the water off West Vancouver’s Thunderbird Marina, Caleigh Cunning had a few questions for her father.
“She said, “˜Daddy, why did the seal drag me in the water?’” her father, North Vancouver resident Mike Cunning, said Wednesday.
“I said, “˜I think the seal wanted you to go for a swim.’
“She said, “˜Well, the seal wasn’t very nice.’”
At about 6 p.m. Tuesday, Cunning, Caleigh and some friends were standing at a dockside fish-cleaning table, washing the day’s catch.
Cunning turned from his daughter for a moment and heard a splash.
“I looked over and couldn’t see my daughter anywhere.”
Caleigh, who’d been wearing a life jacket, popped up about two metres away.
“I said, “˜Caleigh, swim to me, swim to me Caleigh!’”
Cunning said his friend, who had seen the incident, told him the seal had jumped four feet out of the water, took Caleigh by the arm and dragged her into the water.
The incident – from the moment the seal grabbed Caleigh to her recovery back on the dock – took about 10 to 15 seconds, he said.
“It just happened so quickly. It was instantaneous.”
Caleigh treaded water back to the dock. When Cunning pulled his crying, shocked daughter out of the water, he saw her hand was swollen and covered in blood.
Caleigh was treated at Lions Gate Hospital for five puncture wounds to her wrist and placed on antibiotics to ward off infection.
Conflicts between humans and harbour seals are rare, said Paul Cottrell, marine mammal coordinator for the federal department of fisheries and oceans’ Pacific region.
Seals are most likely to appear where they have easy access to food, and that includes marinas, he said.
He said Caleigh had been throwing fish guts and bits to seals earlier that evening, a common but discouraged practice, which may have left fish slime on her hands.
The slime’s scent most likely attracted the seal because it was accustomed to eating thrown fish scraps.
“This is a case of a harbour seal misinterpreting this girl’s hand, thinking that it was a piece of fish.”
Cottrell said the DFO encourages marinas to supply containers for fish remnants near cleaning tables.
Though the incident was a harrowing one, it could have been worse, Cunning said.
Caleigh is taking swimming lessons and she’s confident around the water, said Cunning, an avid fisherman.
“She loves fishing and reeling in fish. She’s been around the ocean all her life.”
Many years ago, a member of Cunning’s extended family drowned when she was five years old, so he is very sensitive and safety-conscious around water, he said.
“Her life jacket gets on in the parking lot, and it doesn’t come off until we get back to the car.”
Thunderbird Marina manager Fred McDonald said though seals are a common sight at the marina, this is the first incident he’s heard of involving an aggressive seal.
Cunning said he was concerned low fish stocks have resulted in an abundance of seals gathering around marinas, which could pose a threat to humans.
But Cottrell said the seal population “has flattened out and stabilized. It’s hit a natural balance.”
About 40,000 seals populate the Strait of Georgia, and about 110,000 seals live along the B.C. coast, Cottrell said.
He said interaction with seals could be pursued as a violation of the Fisheries Act. The regulations apply to people who initiate feeding, touching or swimming with a marine mammal.
Cottrell knew of one similar incident: a B.C. sport fisherman was bitten by a harbour seal as he tried to release a juvenile salmon into the water.
mfhill@vancouversun.com
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