Woman Attempting English Channel Swim Gets Unexpected Visit From Seal
Australian endurance swimmer Eva Buzo swam the English Channel last week in a remarkable ten hours and forty-nine minutes, entering the water in Dover, England and exiting on the beaches of France in honor of the anniversary of D-Day. The water temperatures were bracing throughout, in the fifties, and there were times, especially in the frigid, dark moments before sunrise, that Buzo feared she would’t make it.
Then, she got a cheerleader, in the form of a wild seal.
The seal, whom Buzo nicknamed Trudie in honor of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to successfully swim the channel back in 1926, was following the swimmer closely for several minutes before she even noticed her arrival. Her spotters on the support boat were initially worried about the marine mammal’s approach, concerned she might harass or even injure the swimmer, but instead, the seal merely bonked her on the foot and circled around her, diving and swirling playfully.
“He’s not trying to feed her fish?” asked one of the support staff from the nearby pilot boat.
A moment later, Buzo finally seemed to notice that she’d gotten a partner in her solo swim. She broke her stroke entirely, and started in the water as the pale body of the seal glided right in front of her.
“Hi!” She calls to the animal, who appears to answer by flapping and diving in front of her.
Her companions on the pilot boat inform her that the seal has been circling her for a while now.
“She’s playing!” observed one of her support team.
“That’s amazing!” Buzo replied, pausing for a moment in her quest before swimming on.
“She swam with me and played with me, swimming under me and looking up, poking my toes with her nose. She was having a marvelous time and completely distracted me from everything else,” she later wrote in the caption to the video.
She felt like it was the spirit of Trudy Ederle, there to swim by her side and “help her get through to the sunrise.”
Channel Crossing Rules
According to the official rules of swimming the English Channel, all support staff must stay on the pilot’s boat and only hand the swimmer water and food via a pole, being careful to not make any direct contact with the swimmer, lest the swim be disqualified. However, these rules do not extend to wild animal friends, and the seal is free to swim by her side and even bop her on the toes to make sure she gets the encouragement she needs.
If only we were all so lucky as to have a seal friend.
Seals in the English Channel
Both gray seals and harbor seals can be found in the English Channel, and both are relatively common. It’s unclear from this clip which kind of seal befriended the swimmer, but it is likely a harbor seal, which is smaller in size. This particular seal seems to be only three or four feet in length, and is perhaps a juvenile, who is also experiencing its first Channel crossing. Perhaps it was just as mystified by the appearance of a human so far out in the water as the people on the boat were by the fact that a seal had joined their party.
“It was a magical moment I shall never forget,” writes Buzo.
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