seal pup – Off Old Orchard Beach, Maine, a juvenile harbor seal reportedly grabbed a boogie board from a tourist and rode it toward its colony on Stratton Island during the Fourth of July weekend, delighting customers aboard a Saco charter trip.
On Fourth of July weekend, out on Saco Bay, a charter trip turned into something closer to a scene from a storybook—if you were lucky enough to be watching.
Customers with Keeper Charters, a fishing and sightseeing company in Saco, Maine, spotted what Capt. Marco Lamothe described in a July 4 post as a “gnarly seal pup.” Lamothe wrote that the juvenile had apparently “hijacked a boogie board from an unsuspecting tourist” and made its way “almost all the way back to his colony on Stratton Island off the coast of Scarborough.”.
Lamothe also said there are “hundreds of harbor seals” in the Stratton Island colony, “including dozens of pups.” And for anyone wondering how to top that kind of encounter, his message carried a grin: “You never know what you’ll see out on Saco Bay!”
Lamothe said the encounter was something he and his passengers were fortunate to be able to photograph, after the seal pup’s ride—an odd, but not entirely unprecedented, twist of coastal life. The post referenced that a surfing seal in San Diego, named Sammy, has been known to do something similar.
The result off Maine’s coast was an image people couldn’t stop thinking about: a young seal perched on a boogie board, pushing back toward home, right when the beach was busy and the water was alive with summer noise.
Maine Old Orchard Beach Saco Bay seal pup boogie board Stratton Island harbor seals wildlife Fourth of July