About a decade ago, when I started kayaking, an long timer at it told be to avoid areas where the big seals stayed, ate and got fat.
They really didn’t attack you, they would just get up on your kayak to rest and look for any food you might have.
We had a neighbor who built wooden canoes, and he and his wife laughed at us.
His wife in a pier area in Monterrey had a huge seal get up and into a new canoe with her. It overloaded the canoe and caused it to break up and she took an unplanned dip. Other yakers helped her to shore with the pieces of her formerly new canoe.
That would be traumatic!
I was kayaking on the inland waterway once, at night on a full moon with a strong tide, and all of a sudden an otter head appeared in the water next to me. Literally, just the head. I guess it had gotten chopped off by a propeller earlier in the day. And no matter what I did, the head kept following me because it had gotten caught up in the stream of the kayak. So for the entire trip the moonlight shone upon this pathetic looking head bobbing along rapidly in the black water at my side...
It was a truly creepy experience!