In the same way birds open a window on the wider world of nature, a giant sea creature taking up residence at Seven Mile Beach has introduced nature-lovers to the wonders of the ocean environment.
Neil the elephant seal has proven a social media sensation this winter after coming ashore in the seaside hamlet before deciding to move on.
Neil belongs to a world that we are rarely exposed to, that of remarkable creatures in Tasmanian waters ranging from killer whales, to fish with elongated fins shaped like hands – the rare spotted and red handfish – and birds capable of circumnavigating the globe, like the wandering and royal albatrosses.
The adolescent Neil has certainly been making headlines and I couldn’t resist having a look at him myself when my son emailed me from his home in London to ask me if I had heard of the seal after seeing him featured the BBC news. As if I didn’t know.
Neil wasn’t difficult to find when I drove out to Seven Mile Beach. At the entrance to the hamlet was a flashing, electronic sign warning “seal on road” and, beyond, traffic control officers directing vehicles around Neil’s bulk.
Neil was just off the road, sunning himself against a garden fence bordering a leafy garden, waking from his slumbers occasionally to nonchalantly wave a flipper in the air.
I’ve seen elephant seals in the past, but from afar on Maatsuyker Island. Seeing Neil lounging about in suburbia it soon becomes apparent just how big they are, and that’s in the knowledge that Neil, at about 1,000 kilograms, might be less than a third grown. He could reach 4000 kilograms, reaching six metres in length.
Neil is one of just a handful of elephant seals to be successfully weaned in Tasmania in recent years. These births raise the possibility the world’s biggest seals might be returning to establiush colonies after being largely eradicated during the sealing boom in previous centuries, along with two smaller seals, the Australian and New Zealand fur seals. Only the Australian species now commonly breeds in Tasmania and the closest colony of elephant seals is on Macquarie Island, about 1500 kilometres to the south.
The seals spend most of their lives at sea and only return to land to breed and for their annual moult. Neil at the moment is undergoing the letter process, shedding fur and an outer layer of skin.
Neil has come ashore at other places and each time he presents an incongruous sight, not only because of his sheer bulk, looking at a distance like a giant potato amid the trappings of suburbia. A creature totally out of his natural environment and when I saw woodland birds, including curious magpies, noisy miners and grey butcherbirds, flitting around him it gave a sense of the surreal.
Not that Neil seemed to care.