A Female Grey Seal

Yesterday I was looking out the window and caught some movement in a shallow part of the river. I thought at first it might have been some fish, but then I realized it was a seal. I ran downstairs and got my video camera and then began to film the Female Grey Seal. Looking through the camera I couldn't tell at first, but it seemed to have caught a couple fish. One of them I realized (3/4 in to the editted video) it had in its mouth only after it turned its head. The Mackerel it caught was probably a foot long.

The Saco River is full of Stripers, Herring, Salmon, Shad, Alewives and Mackerel. The river splits just above the island I live on and then there are two sets of waterfalls where it drops about 25' to sea level. In this video you can see the mills on the other side of the river and the Main Street overpass that connects Saco to Biddeford. After that bridge the two parts of the river merge and there is a very wide brackish body of water that continues 5 miles downstream to the ocean. The Seals visit this far up very often. The reason is STRATEGY!

As the river passes between the mills there is no where for the fish to go upstream. If the seal comes up the channel and the fish move to escape it, they only have so much room to move before the water is too shallow.