Rare encounter: a seal swam up to a boat in the Caspian Sea

A seal encounter recorded during a Caspian Sea survey turned unexpectedly close: specialists from Kazakhstan’s Akzhayyk Nature Reserve filmed a Caspian seal swimming right up to their inspection boat. Video of the incident was posted on the reserve’s Instagram account. The reserve said such moments are rare even for trained inspectors, and noted the Caspian seal is endemic to the Caspian Sea, found nowhere else in the wild. Its diet is mainly fish, including sprats, gobies and silversides, but it also eats mollusks and shrimp. The reserve cited threats such as climate change, shipping, and fishing-net entanglement, while noting the species was listed in Kazakhstan’s Red Data Book in November 2020.