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fished a secluded canal this am behind a friends property on bolivar. paddled down a couple hundred yards and a head poked up 20ft away and thought it was a nutria. no. it was a seal. a small seal that circled me many times and chirped/barked at me. I took over 6 min. of video on phone. un freakin real. oh, and caught 3 slot reds. will find someone with more knowledge than I to upload soon. I know, my neighbor said I must be high. too early.

Really?
Texas is too hot for seal.
The hurricane must have brought it here

Are you sure it wasn't an Otter? I don't think there are Seals living anywhere close to Texas but I could be wrong.

not an otter. not a nutria. no fur/hair. I'm convinced it is a seal. behaved like one too. going back out in a bit . hope to see again. taking video cam.

Upload the video to YouTube, and post the link.

TigerLandSportsman wrote:Upload the video to YouTube, and post the link.

migo, I can barely operate my tv remote. after showing a few locals the video, the consensus is that it was most likely an otter. from where? who knows. will load when my child arrives. the guy that posted above was more than likely correct.

Could be a river otter which are generally larger than the otters most people are used to at the zoo. I have seen them in Florida but not in TX.

Otters are definitely here in Southeast Texas and including some of the canal bay front type of places. Otters are in the Lake I live on in Lake Jackson and in Oyster Creek. We used to have Nutria and now we have otters. An otter pilfered my neighbor's crappie he had in a live well that he puts them in before cleaning. He had been mysteriously losing fish from the well, then he saw it take the live fish out of the well and into the lake and eat it while swimming on its back. I saw a dead otter hit by a car just a few feet from the lake and another on a bridge over Oyster Creek.

I'm not sure how they got here, but they are here. It's interesting that I don't ever see nutria anymore. I don't know if the two events are somehow related.

There was a Caribbean Monk Seal that at one time lived in the Gulf of Mexico, but they have recently been declared extinct. The other thing you could have seen was a manatee. They stray to Texas at times. There was a famous one that showed up in Buffalo Bayou at downtown Houston several years ago.

I have seen river otters in Buffalo Bayou near Memorial Park on three occasions, all at least 15 years ago. With the amount of water that has been flowing out of that bayou over the last two weeks, it is not hard to imagine some would end up in parts of the upper bay, but Bolivar? They can be found in Coastal brackish waters though, so I would bet that it what you saw. And they are rarely found alone, so there should be others.

Yep, otters apparently quite abundant throughout SE TX.
Pretty neat you got to watch one up close and personal.
Mink are also in our area, have seen both live and road-killed.
The Caribbean Monk Seals karstopo mentioned, years ago I remember reading somewhere that when the first Texas jetties were built, they could sometimes be seen hauled out on the rocks.
A few years back a friend's brother was fishing lower Galveston bay and had a manatee swim past his boat.

No telling what shuffling of creatures has happened during and since the recent flood. Wouldn't it be cool to actually see a wild seal in Texas, although they are a challenge to fish around. I've fished around Grey Seals in the northeast. They are worse than dolphin for scaring fish and notorious for stealing hooked fish.

It's great to see so much variety and resurgent types of animals and birds out on the water here in Texas. Magnificent Frigate birds, Osprey, Brown Pelicans, Otters, Sea Turtles, none of those were around in any numbers 30 years ago. I like seeing all the sea turtles poking their heads up to take a look when I fish. Osprey always impress me with their plunges from the sky to nab a fish. Maybe there is some remote islet where the Caribbean Monk seal still hangs on and that remnant population could be nurtured and again populate Texas waters. That's one of the best things about fishing, just soaking in the all the great variety of life out there.

i'm convinced it was an otter. thanks for all the info from you guys. went this mornin to same location to catch bait and was hoping for another sighting. never happened. have seen nutria in there also so this was a first. and I agree that it was not alone. caught a lot of shark bait though. workin on video. that damn short bus.

I've seen otters at the wildlife refuge on the north side of East Bay, so it's not a stretch to see them on Bolivar- they may go there to get away from the gators!

Very cool thing to see - you were lucky!

I have seen river otters in many different places throughout se and east Texas, including a couple of small lakes and stock ponds. They can have quite a quirky personality about them.

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Saw a couple of otters last year in the Clear Lake area. They were just as curious about me as I was about them