Walking along The Embarcadero this evening I encountered something unexpected. Near Pier 14 a small crowd had gathered. At first I thought a dog had somehow made it over the fence, but as I got closer I realized it wasn’t a dog at all, but a wild animal — a seal.
Although wild aquatic mammals are often spotted in the San Francisco Bay, we usually only see sea lions and various types of whales. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a seal, at least never this close. Typically they stay away from humans.
The other strange thing is it seemed intent on trying to walk through a fence — one more intended to keep humans from accidentally falling into the water than to keep our fellow aquatic mammals off of land. As far as I could tell it was by no means stuck there either.
I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to do here, but fortunately several people in the crowd were already on their phones calling various local agencies. After one woman notified Animal Control, she announced that we all needed to take a step back for our own safety.
As soon as she said that a number of people who’d been on the scene for a while volunteered to stick around, shoeing people passing by to a safe perimeter until authorities arrived who could better handle the situation.
It’s worth pointing out here that approaching any strangely behaving wild animal is a bad idea. Even though seals may bear a resemblance to dogs and are generally harmless, they do sometimes bite people when threatened, and their sense of threat level could easily be skewed in the wrong circumstance.