Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Finding dead seals along California’s coast is not novel, but decapitated seals? That was something new for North Coast ecologists.
Since at least 2015, the mysterious deaths kept occurring, primarily involving harbor seal pups at MacKerricher State Park, not far from Fort Bragg in Mendocino County. Now researchers have finally solved the yearslong mystery of the headless seals: coastal coyotes.
In a wildlife camera set up last year near the seal rookery at MacKerricher State Park, ecologist Frankie Gerraty captured a coyote decapitating its prey. That breakthrough video has not yet been published or shared publicly as researchers are working to further understand the predator-prey relationship. Gerraty’s cameras have also confirmed this new predator-prey relationship at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County.
Gerraty started hearing about the decapitated harbor seals as he was doing research on the coastal coyotes’ diet. Grimes had been working to understand the phenomenon only with clues, not any confirmation.
When Gerraty saw one of the headless seals up close, he thought the cut along the neck was too clean to be a coyote’s work, and worried it might even be a human’s. Then the video footage proved him wrong.
“We know, 100%, that coyotes are responsible for killing a number of seals in a handful of sites,” Gerraty.