Yesterday, we spent a warm and sunny Sunday morning playing at the Willows Beach and feeding seals at the Oak Bay marina. Our daughter has just recovered from a nasty virus that struck half of the children in her daycare group, and my wife and I were just coming down with the same virus – the vicious pattern familiar to many parents of young kids. The weather was beautiful, though, and we really enjoyed the unrushed time together.
At the marina, there are always 3-5 harbor seals waiting for tourists to feed them frozen fish, which can be bought at the souvenir shop for $2.50 per small plastic bag. According to the source that cannot be revealed (Snowden, eat your heart out!), this is, by far, the most popular item at the gift shop. The seals are wild, but they are well-trained in various ways of extorting the treats from people. For example, they appear to know the schedule of the tour buses, they can splash their fins on the surface to attract the crowd’s attention, and they always gather around the dock when a small child appears (as it was in our case).
While the little one was having fun throwing fish to the seals (the closest one got most of it) and my wife was keeping her from joining them in the water, I tried to bait the seals to grab the fish from the side of the dock, while pre-focusing my camera on the fish. I used a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens
