Harp Seal Nursery
Atlantic seal pups depend on this beautiful – and dangerous – world of ice for their survival
Fluffy white seal pups spend their first few weeks of life atop precarious floating ice.
WHEN YOU WALK on sea ice, it ’ s easy to forget that there’s an ocean below you. This frozen world is stripped down to essentials: impossibly blue sky, bright sun bouncing off fresh snow, wind that vibrates like a cello, whiteness all around.
Then I hear the distant chorus of infant cries and I stand still, listening. It’s a precious moment that I want to appreciate fully before I pull out my cameras. I catch a slight movement in a ridge of snow ahead – a gentle and clumsy wave of a tiny flipper. I see a pup nestled inside a small snow cave moulded by body heat and movement, protected from the wind. Its
colouring is still tinged with hints of yellow from amniotic fluid.
I choose a spot a polite distance away and kneel in the snow, watching and waiting, noting the date: March 8, 2019. I hear sloshing water and short grunting breaths before I see a whiskered face with big dark eyes rise and survey the surroundings from a nearby hole in the ice.
The female emerges, using curved claws to pull herself onto and across the ice to her pup. They meet with a nose-to-nose kiss of recognition that establishes kinship: are you my pup? Are you my mother? The female turns to gauge my presence, determines I am no threat, and settles onto her side, shuts her eyes, and begins to nurse.
Welcome to the harp seal nursery in the Gulf of St Lawrence off the Magdalen Islands ( Îles-de-la-Made
leine), Canada, one of two Northwest Atlantic harp seal whelping grounds. Adult seals migrate here from the Arctic, the pregnant females searching for suitable ice on which to give birth. Harp seals are an ice-obligate species: they require a stable sea platform of ice for pups to survive. Born on the ice in late February and early March, the pups nurse for 12-15 days before being left on their own. The young seals are among the most captivating creatures on the planet, with obsidian eyes, charcoal noses, and cloud-soft fur.
As I scan the landscape, I see larger, more active pups in their whitecoat phase. These older pups, born days earlier, have the distinct advantage of time in the increasingly unpredictable world of climate change and its impact on this ice. Late-born pups especially need an adequate period of stable ice to survive in a world where spring comes earlier every
year and, with it, increasingly strong storms that demolish the ice pack. A life born to ice is difficult, and natural mortality is high.
THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS are an archipelago of islets resembling ships at anchor in the Gulf of St Lawrence. I had been here in 2011 for a story about the gulf’s marine ecosystem. The boat we boarded then to meet the seals was a steel-hulled fishing – and seal-hunting – vessel.
Magdalen Islanders have fished and hunted seals off these shores since the 1600s. It’s a controversial tradition that continues with strict quotas and regulations. The hunting of ‘whitecoats’, which refers to the soft, fluffy white fur newborn seals have until three weeks old is illegal. There has also been a substantial decline in the number of seals harvested due to decreasing market price and unfavourable ice conditions. “Given the market situation for hunting products,” our guide, Mario Cyr, told me, “ecotourism and observation tours are the best alternative for most boat owners and hunters.”
After two days of searching, the boat’s captain nosed the vessel into a patch of sea ice supporting a herd of more than 10,000 seals. We drifted with the ice over several days.
It was extraordinary to pull on crampons and walk among this gathering of pulsating life on the ice and then to put on a dry suit and mask, and snorkel and slide into their world with a camera.
Life at the edge of the patch can be a busy place, with mothers coming and going beneath a dark-blue cathedral of ice pierced by shafts of light, apprehensive whitecoats peering into the sea considering their first swim, and veterans gliding about
and exploring their new ocean world.
The 2011 assignment was a photographic success, and it gifted me with a life- changing moment. On our last day, as I floated respectfully near a mother seal and her pup, an aggressive male seal nipped at my ankles and scrabbled over my back, pushing me below the surface. The mother seal fought him off and then nudged both her pup and me out of harm’s way.
I was st i ll processing this as our ship headed to port ahead of a low-pressure system. The storm tore across the gulf, whipping it to froth. By the time we made shore, we learnt that the sea ice had disintegrated beneath the herd and the pups had been lost.
THE STORM had made my encounter with the mother seal bittersweet and I knew we were now facing a new truth – that the world of ice was as fragile as a dream. The realisation galvanised my resolve to return each year that ice conditions would allow, to track the harp seals’ lives and connect others with these creatures and their diminishing realm.
Fast forward to 2019. The boat charter for our annual visit to the seal-nursery was cancelled; the fishing boats were ‘iced in’. But it was looking like a good year for seals, so we joined a helicopter ecotourism trip that takes travellers over the pack ice during seal pup season, landing only if conditions are safe.
That’s how I find myself watching a pup nursing, as its mother soaks up the warm sun. As I walk back towards the helicopters, I see a girl sitting quietly next to a chubby whitecoat staring back at her. Other travellers I meet include a couple on a Valentine’s Day date, a cancer patient, and a Japanese photographer and guide celebrating his 30th year with the seals. There’s a young lady who brought her toy seal from childhood, and a 20-something man who slept in his car and ate canned goods after spending his last dollar for the season’s final helicopter ride. Passion and curiosity brought them all here to learn and grow.
Before my snorkelling encounter with the protect ive mother and her pup, I was a sceptic about human-wildlife interactions. But I now accept that sometimes things happen when we least expect it. Biologists can point out why a testosterone- fuelled male seal was compelled to challenge me while I was swimming with his potential mate. But they cannot easily explain why a mother seal would push me to safety with her pup.
I don’t need explanations. I just embrace it.