Yellowknifer columnist and houseboater Nancy Vail saw something highly unusual recently.
It all started after putting her dogs in her car on July 16. According to Vail, she looked over at the bay and saw a head staring back at her, about 20 feet away, she said.
"My first thought wasn't 'What is it?' It was, 'Where am I?'" she recalled.
Her encounter made its way to Facebook, sparking quite the discussion on the NWT Species page. Her post reads, "that was either the biggest otter I've ever seen in Yellowknife Bay or anywhere, or it was a seal." That speculation was met with dozens of replies, including others saying they saw a seal too.
Vail said what she spotted must have been a seal.
"There's lots of talk about it being a river otter or a big otter, but I know what I saw. And I've lived in Newfoundland, so I know seals. I saw the head — it was pretty clear, the shape of the nose, the shape of the head."
Vail added she's familiar with how a seal swims and dives. Based on where she saw the creature, closer to the Coast Guard's dock side, it seems even less likely that it could have been an otter, considering they tend to frequent around houseboats instead.
Can a seal make its way to Great Slave Lake? Absolutely, but it's not likely. A seal would have to swim the length of the Mackenzie River, to Great Slave Lake from the Beaufort-Delta, according to Shannon Graf, the senior communications officer for Environment and Climate Change. That distance is 1,700 km.
Graf added she reached out to the government department's wildlife division and it's believed that this is likely a case of mistaken identity.
"We believe it is a large otter," said Graf. "The North American River Otter’s range would match up with this. A large otter could easily be 30lbs/15kg or more, so it could be mistaken for a small seal."