Leopard Seal – third time is the charm

A couple of times previously this year I have gone chasing a vagrant seal reported on our beaches. The first time was a Leopard Seal near the Cerberus naval base on the Mornington Peninsula which judging by the freshness of the slide mark to the water must have left a mere hour or two before I arrived at dawn. The second time Rohan Clarke and I headed down to Port Fairy to chase a freshly reported Crabeater Seal and again we arrived to spotlighting for slide marks and no seal after it had decamped a few hours before and gave us a chance to generate some unique memes. So when I heard of yet another Leopard Seal (probably the 5th or 6th report this year in Victoria) A quick examination of ALA and other atlas sources show many records for Victoria so they must be a regular visitor. I was up early with Lucas who never needs an excuse for a beach adventure to go and chase. About this time I was pretty sure I was going to be able to photograph yet another rare seal slide mark.

After a coffee and a power juice Lucas and I arrived down at a beach on the Mornington Peninsula and jumped out of the car and ran to scan the beach – and nothing! Still there were a couple of areas of rocks in either direction that a seal could be hiding behind and Lucas was keen to play so we wandered down to investigate. Lucas was pretty excited to see his first Hooded Plovers with no fewer than six on the beach. He was off observing the plovers when I wandered past a section of rocks and there was a rather small (at 5-6 feet) but awesome Leopard Seal lying there. At first I saw clouds of flies rise of its unmoving head and I thought we had arrived to a corpse but it eventually stretched and rolled onto its side. I am pretty sure I was less excited than the quoll a couple of weeks ago but Lucas assures me it was abut the same. The animal was very chilled and never raised its head the time we were there. It appeared to be in very good nick for a young animal far from home and a quick snap of its dump showed it may have snagged a Little Penguin or two in the preceding week. We were very privileged to be able to spend some time in the presence of this apex predator although Lucas was distracted by some pretty cool rockpools. The seal appeared to be a young animal in some sort of moult with patchy fur on its face. We got a good 20 minutes alone with the animal until a couple of Rangers turned up who asked us to move even further back before approaching the seal closer than we ever would have.

Knowing it was time to go we wandered back up the beach indulging in a quick high five before getting into the serious business of exploring the beach washed seaweed and stalking the Hoodies. Lucas has not stopped talking about Leopard Seals since and we had to write it down in his mammal list along with the Hooded Plovers in his birdbook – queue proud Dad.