The Surf Scooter

Dolfinches are at the peak of their diversity in the ocean age, having expanded from simple fish-eaters to apex predators as well as to herbivores - a shift that is rare in marine animals. The most herbivorous dolfinches are porplets, most of which are rather small, very round and very cute, with short blunt beaks adapted to crop sea plants and a well-developed chewing apparatus formed by a tongue lined with blunt keratin teeth. They are supersocial herd animals with a strong group mentality and require virtually constant companionship, thus their groups can number in the thousands. The cattle of the Serinan sea - and despite their intelligence which borders on full sapience in several species - they are unfortunately the base diet for a large number of predator species including several other dolfinches.

There is a species of porplet which has adapted a clever way to avoid the majority of their enemies however, simply by living in places inaccessible to them. The surf scooter is a dwarf porplet never any bigger than 60 lbs, which is specialized to feed on otherwise ungrazed algae which coats the rocks in extremely shallow water around the coasts of the Meridian Islands. Taking advantage of food sources out of reach of other aquatic grazers and largely inaccessible to their predators, the surf scooter feeds in the zone where the waves crash against the shore, and follows it as it descends and rises up the shore depending on the tides so as to always avoid deep and dangerous water. Here the scooter feeds without competition, using its squared-off beak to scrape algae off the stones.

Occasionally predators learn to catch similar prey that might take refuge in shallow coastal pools and then become trapped there and cornered. Large dolfinches may even beach themselves to snatch prey taking refuge in such shallow areas, risking life for a meal. But the surf scooter here as well has a trick up its sleeve, for being so small - indeed, the littlest of all living dolfinches and the smallest to live in tens of millions of years - it can crawl out of the water and onto the land. Without the weight of its relatives to burden it, the surf scooter not only crawls on its belly, but can bounce along at a decent speed to avoid threats. It is the only dolfinch to do so and frequently rests above the water line, where the female also prefers to give birth so as to save her newborn from the danger of navigating the crashing waves immediately.

So well-adapted is this littlest of the dolfinches to life near the land that it is now more likely to be preyed upon by birds or the large tribbats which stalk the inland than by any aquatic enemy. Their small size is not entirely advantageous, for it leaves them vulnerable to small predators few other dolfinches would worry about. Sea ravens, a large and opportunistic sparrowgull, are now their most prudent threat. Able to work together to trap the resting porplets on land if they are not careful, they then have little difficulty subduing them. Relative to the large population around the islands, however, this predation scarcely affects the numbers of this hardy and adaptable species.