\n Chris Pike was on his daily walk past the Salmon Leap pub and along the River Test with his two dogs when he spotted the animal.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cI heard an almighty splash, I honestly thought someone had fallen in the water. Then I saw the seal bobbing up and down with a massive fish in its mouth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Chris, a lorry driver from Totton, said the seal, which he affectionately named \u201cPhil\u201d, was \u201chuge\u201d. \u201cHe was a big, fat lump \u2013 bigger than a large dog,\u201d he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n The sighting happened at the River Test at Totton, where the river widens and becomes tidal as it flows into Southampton Water.\n<\/p>\n
\n The river here is famous among anglers for its brown trout and grayling, with salmon and sea trout running up from the estuary each year, making it an attractive hunting ground for predators such as seals following the fish.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 47-year-old says the animal has become \u201ca bit of a celebrity\u201d in the area, with walkers and anglers frequently reporting sightings along the river.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said a number of residents go and look for the seal, but sightings are irregular.\n<\/p>\n
\n Chris said this is not the first time he has crossed paths with the animal.\n<\/p>\n
\n In March 2025, he spotted what he believes may have been the same seal in the same stretch of river, though he admits he \u201ccan\u2019t be sure if it was Phil or another one\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0On that occasion, the animal appeared briefly before diving beneath the surface and disappearing.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said he spotted the seal again at around 2pm on Sunday, January 31 this year.\n<\/p>\n
\n His dogs, he added, were \u201ccompletely unfazed\u201d, even as the seal thrashed its catch in the water.\n<\/p>\n
\n Chris said he walks the route every evening after work and often at weekends.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although he doesn\u2019t \u201cactively go looking for the seal\u201d, he joked that \u201cPhil seems to come looking for me\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Pike was on his daily walk past the Salmon Leap pub and along the River Test with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-406312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}