On October 18, this severely bitten seal was on the beach.
She’s okay, and will survive. No major organs were injured.
I’ve ccomforted myself about the horrible wounds elephant seals endure by thinking that blubber doesn’t have many nerve endings. While I watched, a gull came over and pecked this open wound. The seal reacted sharply. No question that it wa sensitive.
Maybe my hope that the seal isn’t suffering isn’t true. maybe they are just very stoic.
Another docent raised the question of whether this could be an orca wound rasther than as shark bite. Orca teeth are different from shark teeth. Biologists identify otter wounds as shark bites when they find a shark’s tooth in the wound. [The otter is dead by then. They are small critters with little blubber, and any shark bite is fatal.]
No chance of that with this wound. But Patrick Robinson and Roxanne Beltran of UC Santa Cruz agreed it’s more likely a shark bite.
“The odds are likely it is a white shark because of the (relatively) small size of the jaw and the fact that the seal lived,” Patrick wrote in an email. “I think orcas have a higher success rate than white sharks.”
Sharks take a bite and then let their prey weaken or die before going in to forage. Orcas dodn’t have that restraint. It’s all instant gratification.
This is one that got away.