[harbour seal]

Hey Eric,

i am intruiged by your mysterious encounter at whytecliff and have not been able to find anything matching your description in my various taxonomy books either. having no luck on my own i had a good friend of mine, who is a marine biologist, read through the thread and look at your diagram.

a little background: he has been conducting research/working for the last 15 years all around the province (freshwater and marine ecosystems). additionally, he worked as the curator of the marine collection at the royal british columbia museum in victoria for a few years after grad school, and is an avid local scuba-diver to boot.

anyway, given the information provided the best he could offer was a parsimonious guess: cuttlefish.

based on their abiliity to change the shape, colour and texture of their skin/bodies it is at least possible that a locally-found species could be mistaken to have a hard, white interlocking exoskeleton, in the overall body-shape described.

too bad you didn't have a camera at the time. have you had any further encounters? or epiphanies of your own on the identity of this mystery creature?

cheers,
sean
vancouver, bc