The photograph of the dolphin and report of sightings of a seal in the Dart last week reminded me of an amusing incident which happened several years ago.
I was being rowed ashore in a small dinghy by one of my nephews and I saw what I took to be a large black plastic refuse bag floating in the water.
I told my nephew to row over so that we could recover it.
The bag appeared to have some air in it so, when we got abreast of the 'bag', my nephew brought one oar down on the object to expel the air.
We were both very surprised when the object was not soft at all. It was very hard and next second a seal's head popped up with a very startled expression on its face as if to say 'what the .... was that!'
The seal swam away with no problem but I expect it was unamused.