A rare phenomenon off the White Rock pier has locals leaning to look over the railing: as many as 200 harbour seals, long thought to be solitary at sea, are congregating in Semiahmoo Bay.
It’s a sight that has little precedent, and one biologist tells CityNews this behaviour at this scale hasn’t been documented in academic literature before.
“How close they are together, 90 in just one giant group, that’s pretty unique,” said Dr. Cindy Elliser, who researches marine mammals.
Elliser figures the animals are here because there’s a strong food source — which the masses of anchovies under the pier would support — but it isn’t entirely clear why this is happening.
“We don’t know much about the in-water behaviour of harbour seals,” she said.
“A lot of research is done on when they haul out on land, so we don’t know too much what’s going on.”
Elliser says she has never seen anything like it, but one local says this isn’t the first time he has witnessed this — although he says it is rare.
“I’ve been living out here for 40 years,” said nearby resident Norman Orr.
“I’ve only experienced it just maybe three times in all that time.”
Suzanne Sevigny lives by the water and says she’s been documenting the seal presence for the past couple of weeks. She says the numbers have been steadily growing, with as many as 95 in a single pod at one time.
And they’ve become a hit with the locals.
Mitch George is a retired fisherman and says he’s only seen this kind of activity far afield.
“Usually you need to go to the Queen Charlottes [Haida Gwaii], or the west coast of Vancouver Island to see something like this,” George said.
The explosion of biodiversity on the water — with seals, sea lions, and several species of birds close by — is a spectacle, and the amount of information it generates can make a real difference for researchers.
“The more eyes on the water, the better. If you can see something, you can share it with researchers, and then we can know what questions to ask,” Elliser said.
“We didn’t know that this was a thing until we were out there looking and saw it, and so this adds to that data. Community scientists, just by being out and observing, can help scientists be able to collect the data that they normally wouldn’t be able to get.”