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Prison guard Jim Crawford was doing a perimeter check Saturday night at William Head Institution in Metchosin when he happened upon an uninvited guest having a late-night snack.

It was a wolf chowing down on a seal pup it had snatched from the ocean a few metres away.

Crawford was in a patrol vehicle rounding a turn close to the prison parking lot at about 10:30 p.m. when the headlights shone directly on the wolf, about five metres away. They locked eyes for about 15 seconds before the wolf took a last bite of seal and bounded back to the shore and into darkness.

“It’s not the first we’ve had wolves inside the compound,” Crawford said. “We’ve got 95 acres here and we often see bears and cougars and wolves, so we don’t think it’s unusual.

“We call it a smorgasbord feeding frenzy for wildlife. About 100 deer live in the prison grounds. We’ve got rabbits, otters, so there’s lots of feed available for predators.”

The institution, in a former immigration quarantine station, opened in 1959. It is a minimum-security federal prison with about 90 inmates living in duplex-style units. The compound is fenced but open along the shore. At low tides, animals — and sometimes inmates — can walk around the fencing.

Crawford, who mans the front gate, said the “whitish-gray” wolf left the seal carcass behind. He pointed cameras on the area but as of 1 a.m., it had not returned.

A few months ago, Crawford saw a wolf eating a large bird, likely a great blue heron, on another part of the prison compound.

He said protocols call for the reporting of predators on the grounds so employees and inmates can be cautioned. “Some days, there are complete lockdowns for everyone to stay inside,” he said. “We had a bear eating fish down on the shoreline near the ballfield that had to be chased away.”

About 350 wolves live on Vancouver Island, about 70 per cent of them on the North Island, according to Gary Allan of the Swell Wolf Education Centre in Nanaimo. There are packs north of Campbell River and down the coast to Ucluelet, and some near the mountains of Nanaimo, Ladysmith, Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew.

The Island wolves are considered a subspecies of the North American grey wolf known as canis lupus nublus, some of which are considered coastal wolves, like Takaya — the well-documented lone wolf of Discovery and Trial islands off Victoria — because of their marine diet.

While wolves tend to feast on deer, the diet of coastal wolves has adapted to include marine life such as otters and seal pups.

Cheryl Alexander, who wrote a book and made a documentary film about Takaya, noted the wolf’s ability to pierce seal skin and turn the carcass inside out to get at the meat.

Crawford doesn’t know how many wolves are in Metchosin, but says prison employees hear them all the time.

“You mostly hear them at night howling over on Rocky Point in the distance,” said Crawford, who wanted to let the public know that wolves and other predators are out there.