The call of the sea

We witnessed a strange event while we were on our beach trip. One afternoon we decided to take a break from our very strenuous lounging and walk along the shoreline. We happened to notice that some of the gulls had stopped milling about groups of people searching for food, and were lined up along the shoreline, staring out to sea. On our way back, there were at least 30 gulls, all staring very intently out at the sea.

I asked Jav, "I wonder what they are hearing?" He pretended to all of sudden hear it too, and snapped around to face the sea with a very longing look on his face. This cracked me up, and we went onto talk about something else. But it stayed on my mind. What were they doing? I thought some ancient memory was causing them to remember generation after generation of gulls. Ancestors struggling to survive with the angry churning backdrop of the sea spurning their instincts.

The actual reason was not nearly as romantic as all of my musings. It wasn't what they were hearing, but what they saw. When we got back to the condo, we went out on the balcony to hang out our beach towels, and Jav spotted what the gulls had been looking at. The biggest patch of seaweed you've ever seen was slowly getting closer to the shore. It was just this huge brown patch in the middle of all the blue. And sure enough, the next morning the beach was covered with seaweed. The gulls hung around the edge of the water for the next day, as we watched the seaweed slowly roll back into the water, then roll back onto the shore. Each time, gathering small fish and who knows what for the gulls to feast on. A smorgasboard of the highest order, at least to gulls.

I guess I'd probably go catatonic, too, if I saw my dinner for the next few weeks floating towards me.