And then he hears them. He hears them slipping and rubbing against one another. He hears them schooling so tightly they have become one writhing and fluttering body. He wonders what is herding them so absolutely. He can’t sense a shark or dolphins. He can’t sense another seal.

He swims curiously towards them and the water becomes murky with their faeces and something else, something sweet and rotten. Decomposing. It is the most alluring thing he has ever smelt or tasted on the water. And the sound! The sound of them slithering and thrashing together riles him into a frenzy and he rushes in their direction. The water becomes so murky he doesn’t see them—he doesn’t see the countless glinting, slick bodies swarming so dense it’s as if there’s no water dividing them—until he hits it: a webbed barrier, herding them, trapped, and blocking him from them.

It doesn’t give when he accidentally swims right into it. Nor when he rams it again and again. So he circles the tight-knit school—so vast, so teeming—knocking against the herding barrier, checking it for gaps enough to break through. He finds none.

He thinks for a moment or two, then he dives deep—as deeply as he can. Down low, the decomposing rot is so thick he can’t see anything and it worms its way up his nose and makes his head spin, but not in a good way. He shoots towards the surface, desperate for air and light and food—food food food—and, when he breaches, he kicks with his tail as hard as he can, launching himself as high as he can get. His head and shoulders and some of his body burst up and out of the water and onto the topside of the barrier. He feels himself starting to slip back down, so he wiggles his body and sculls at the air with his flippers and beats at the water with his tail. His balance shifts. He slides onto a bed of tight mesh which sags under his weight. He feels a thread pop against his belly, and then another and another. Slowly, the mesh breaks and he slips headfirst into the most tightly herded school of fish he has ever come across.