Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
September 2017
I missed seal-pupping season this summer due to a back injury. From mid-June until well into August I was unable to walk or bicycle down to my favorite beach, and kayaking was out of the question. I was sad to miss boating offshore where “a-big-one-and-a-little-one” pairs revealed what was going on in our local Harbor seal pupping season — how the little ones were learning their seal skills around the rocky shoals in this part of the Salish Sea, following mom through kelp beds, watching out for orcas and sealions, practicing holding their breath, negotiating the sharp steep rocks at haul-outs, and generally getting to know the aquatic neighborhood.
But even worse was knowing that Friendly Seal, the lively inquisitive young female I’ve come to know over the past four years, might be pupping and possibly even bringing her baby into the bay where she spends so much time near my favorite beach. I didn’t even know she was a she until the summer of 2016 when FS appeared twice with a new pup — I think her first, since in previous years I saw her alone in July.
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I got to know her as a playful friendly youngster in the fall of 2013 when she sought out my kayak to play tag and peekaboo, the first of many encounters. Seals are generally curious but Friendly Seal is unusually so, and since she spends so much time in this bay fishing and I was out kayaking fairly often, we got to know each other. She seems to have a particular fascination for Mr O, my sometime-kayaking buddy (often he’s working on our boat moored on the buoy, so she listens for bumps and bangs from the boat). Maybe it’s because we see her so often that we perceive her distinctive behavior — with us, and other folks in the water and on shore.
So you can imagine my delight a couple of weeks ago when I was able to go out kayaking again for the first time in months. At first, it wasn’t FS I saw, it was a seal pup snoozing in the bay quietly.
At first I thought it was a piece of driftwood....floating, unmoving. Then as I drifted a little closer, it turned to look at me. Seals nap lightly.
I could tell it was a pup by its small size and short nose.
I’ve seen young pups floating and napping quietly here before. It’s hard work growing as fast as they must, learning to be independent in the six weeks after being born. Newborn seals can swim almost immediately, even diving briefly, and while they don’t hunt very seriously for a while, it takes a tremendous amount of energy just growing in their early days. They rest when they can, even getting a ride on mom’s back when they travel some distance.
Pups nurse for about a month and a half, doubling their weight in that time. Producing all that rich fatty milk, looking after her pup, plus squeezing in a little fishing when she can, is exhausting for mom. She’ll lose as much as half her normal weight before she weans her pup. Typically, sometime in August moms leave their pups to fend for themselves, heading off to fish fulltime to regain their body mass. The weaned pups, sometimes known as weaners, often hang around together for the next year.
Most seals in my area will pup around the end of June/beginning of July. A few give birth as early as May and as late as August — could this be a late-born pup? A study of freely-reproducing captive seals (Temte 1985, referenced in linked source below) found female Harbor seals tend to pup at the same time each year; if that’s true for wild seals, it’s most likely that FS’s pup this year (if she had one) would already be weaned by now since I saw her with a young pup in July last year. But that’s one study, and not of wild seals.
In general, most pups are weaned and independent by September, so it was strange to see Friendly Seal apparently hanging around and keeping watch over this pup.
That may be a complete misinterpretation of events, but what I saw was (1) the pup watching FS, and (2) what appeared to be FS herding me away from the pup, as you see in the title photo of this Bucket, circling around the front of my kayak, staring straight into my face, unlike her usual MO, which is surfacing behind me, part of our usual game of peekaboo.
The pup was not agitated. It kept an eye on me where I drifted, opening its eyes now and then, sometimes swimming a short distance, so I could tell it was ok. It floated not far from the beach. This protected bay has peaceful calm waters and no predators.
By coincidence earlier in the day I saw another young seal, bigger than a pup, on the other side of this bay, and wondered it might be Friendly Seal’s baby from last year. She brought her pup into the bay at least twice last summer so her pup may have learned how to get here. Seals are proficient navigators with good memories, using terrestrial landmarks by day and the stars by night. They are also non-migratory and will tend to stay in the area they were born. The second time I saw FS and her pup last summer she was teaching the pup how to fish....they dived in tandem, staying down for a while, coming up together somewhere else. Seals are opportunistic feeders and this bay is full of bottomfish like gunnels, sculpins and flounder. A rich feeding ground would be a destination to remember. I’ve seen many different seals here fishing.
How would I be able to tell if it was the same seal? As it happens, the pattern of markings in a seal’s coat persists its whole life, reappearing after every annual molt. I take photos of seals so I can compare them that way. Looking at side views of this youngster and FS’s 2016 pup, both left and right, I conclude they are NOT the same. I note also the youngster has a healing injury behind its left ear.
Left side comparison:
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FS’s pup is darker overall, with sharp white markings; the youngster is more light-colored with dark markings.
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How do I know this other seal is a youngster, some age between 1 and 4? In their early years Harbor seals have dark patches around their eyes which they lose on maturity, at age 4-6. If we take a look at a photo of FS in her youth, we can see both her dark eyes patches, and also her unique semi-circle markings visible on the left side behind her ear. She has other patterns on her right side so I can ID her from that angle too.
I’ve written a gazillion Buckets about Friendly Seal, from the very first time we met to the summer she had her pup (discovery & fishing lesson), and if you’ve followed the story, you’ll remember that her favorite games are scratching along the underside of my kayak, and popping up behind me or Mr O, sometimes nudging our kayaks from where we can’t see her. This time she was clearly swimming across my bow, getting my attention for sure.
So I kept an even greater distance from the pup, just in case Friendly Seal was sharing a day in the bay with this pup, whoever its mom may be, and letting me know my place. I’m just a visitor in her world, and occasionally get very very lucky when she’s willing to share a moment in her life like this — supremely joyful times for me!
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Encyclopedia of Puget Sound has an excellent chapter on Harbor Seals, published in 2014 , with lots of specifics about their behavior, senses, population, etc, especially about our local Salish Sea seals HERE.
(and some more Friendly Seal Buckets here, here, here, here, here, here, here)t
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