The most surprising thing about the kill was how easy and fast it was.
The seal dived into the black depths of the canyon pool in the Pitt River, flushed out a spring salmon, trailed it across the shallows and pinned the fish against a rock, killing it with a violent head jerk.
The chase had taken less than a minute and had we not been rafting by at that moment, it would have gone unseen – as perhaps tens of millions of such kills do each year.