Within a day of setting up the cameras, Artelle and Paquet were proven wrong, with the footage depicting a sea wolf emerging from the water with a buoy in its mouth.
It dropped the buoy on the beach, picked up the now-exposed line, and pulled on it until the trap emerged.
The wolf picked up the trap with its mouth, moved it to shallower water and ate the bait inside.
“We had to pick our jaws off the floor,” Artelle told The Canadian Press.
“We know that they’re really, really smart, but it hadn’t crossed our mind that, oh, maybe a wolf is swimming out to the deeper traps and bringing the buoy to shore, pulling the line up just like a person would.”
The camera later picked up another wolf doing the same thing, suggesting they have learned from one another.