Emerson the seal back in the water, Oak Bay police say
Posted April 30, 2024 7:40 am.
Police in a Vancouver Island community were forced to close a stretch of road for a few hours Sunday, to allow an elephant seal named Emerson to get back into the water.
The Oak Bay Police Department shut Beach Drive between Windsor and Currie roads temporarily, noting Emerson had been crossing the route.
“Efforts are underway to move him back down the beach to avoid an accident,” police said just after 10 a.m. Sunday.
Police noted the Department of Oceans and Fisheries was assisting to ensure the animal got back into the sea safely.
Beach Drive reopened to traffic just before 1 p.m., with police confirming Emerson was “back in the water.”
The elephant seal returned to Victoria in early April after defying attempts to relocate him. He had swam more than 200 kilometres to return to his preferred urban habitat to moult.
The DFO said April 17 that the 225-kilogram seal swam an “astonishing” average of 34 kilometres a day during a six-day journey, after the failed relocation to waters near Vancouver Island’s Barkley Sound on April 5.
Fisheries officer Morgan Van Kirk says he was “blown away” by news that two-year-old Emerson had returned to Victoria earlier in the month, lounging on a beach during his annual moult, a process in which seals shed their fur and top layer of skin.
Emerson, named by U.S. researchers who have tracked him since birth, has a history of turning up in unusual locations and has been photographed on busy city streets since first being reported on April 1.
