A seal about to lug off something floating in the water (7)
I believe the answer is:
seagull
'a seal' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both animals as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'about to lug off something floating in the water' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'about' could be 'a' (abbreviation in Chambers) and 'a' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'lug' is 'gul' which is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'sel' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for seagull that I've seen before include "Bird paradoxically fond of landfill sites" , "Avian scavenger" , "One sitting atop mast perhaps" , "Marine bird" , "Main creature" .)