While we were visiting the beautiful beach at Muckle Roe – an island on the west coast of the Shetland Islands – we spotted an otter running toward the surf. It quickly disappeared under the water, but I kept close watch and saw his head appear occasionally as he hunted in a shallow bed of kelp among the rocks a few meters offshore. Then – ahah! – he caught something. I watched him swim toward shore, a crab squirming in his jaws, just barely above the surface of the water. He reached the shore, but just behind a large boulder, where I could no longer see him. I grabbed my long lens and walked quietly down the beach, behind the boulder, and peered over. There he was, just a few meters away, gnawing on his crab!
David Kotz 