The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Seals swim south into the area from Maine, Mass.
NORWALK — Unlike their distant relatives, sea lions, seals are far less gregarious creatures.
Each year around November, a large group of harbor seals and gray seals, which spend much of the year off the coast of Massachusetts or Maine, travel down to Long Island Sound, just to get away.
“Seals like to spread out. They’re looking for room and less competition for space and food, so come a bit south,”said Dave Sigworth, the Maritime Aquarium’s associate director of communications.
The seals make the trek and for several months while the weather is cold, roughly from late November to early April, to snack on fish and lounge on the rocks and shoals of the Norwalk Islands during low tide.
During that period, for more than two decades, the Maritime Aquarium has offered “Seal-Spotting and Birding Cruises,” which allow the public close views of the seals, and visiting winter waterfowl, such as buffleheads, mergansers, Brant geese and long-tailed ducks.
On every cruise, participants can help staff collect plankton samples, which are then added to the Long Island Sound Biodiversity Project, an online census of the Sound’s species that is sponsored by the Maritime Aquarium.
The migration is necessary in part because seal numbers are strong. Both grey seals and harbor seals are considered species of “least concern” on the conservation status spectrum.
Their move south is not necessarily dictated by water temperature — some seals remain off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts year-round — and they are less vulnerable to human encroachment than other creatures in the Long Island Sound, like turtles, several of which were killed by boaters in the summer and fall.
“The number of boats out on the Sound is very limited in winter. Also, seals are a bit more agile in water than sea turtles. If something were to come their way, they would be much more able to get out of the way,” Sigworth said.
The seals are a common site in Norwalk and other coastal Connecticut towns during these months, sometimes even coming on to the property of people with homes on the water.
“People with shoreline property actually might find one on their beach or shoreline at some point. It’s important that those seals be left alone,” Sigworth said, adding that seals are federally protected marine mammals that can also bite and spread shared diseases to dogs. “Seals can come up out of the water. They don’t strand like whales and dolphins. So unless the seal is there 24 hours later, it’s probably fine. It’s just resting.”