By Tim Carman
After nearly an hour of searching in our two rented helicopters, we finally spot an ice pan with a healthy number of harp seal pups on it. Wildlife photographer Brian Skerry, who has covered this icy terrain many times before, agrees that the location should serve our purposes: to document the seal nursery in the days before the 2005 Canadian hunt.
Once that decision is made, I can feel my heart start to race. Unlike Skerry or our pilots or our resident seal hunt expert, Rebecca Aldworth, I have never witnessed harp seals up close, and I am anxious to make their acquaintance. I can feel my anxiousness turn to impatience as the helicopter repeatedly circles the ice pan, its tilt and speed causing the blood to rush to my head like a rickety roller coaster, while the pilots look for the best location to land.
My impatience only heightens as Aldworth, a trained ice guide, insists that we adhere to the strict protocols of navigating the pan, which means that we follow in her footsteps as she stabs at the ice with her walking stick to make sure we don't fall through a snow-covered blow hole. Child-like, I want to run, despite my bulky survival suit that affords all the maneuverability of a moon suit, straight to the nearest seal pup.
Our trek to a pup who's huddled on the far side of the pan has all the trappings of a junior high field trip—single file, quiet, and crackling with nervous energy. We stop many feet from the pup and one of our staff videographers sets down his tripod and begins to roll. After several agonizing minutes from this distance, I ask Aldworth if we can get closer, and she agrees. I'm surprised at my reaction when my eyes finally meet those of a live seal pup.
"Oh, sweetie! It's okay!"
I say this endearment with a tone and affection that startles and embarrasses me. Where does this come from? Why would I have such a reaction to a wild animal I've only seen in photos?
The answer to these questions boils down to one word: dogs.
Harp seal pups, with their large, inky and watery eyes, look at you the way stray dogs might—with what seems like a combination of fear, neediness, and teeth-clenching vulnerability. This impression is reinforced by the pups' appearance: Their faces protrude and slope into the most canine-like snout, which sprouts jet-black whiskers that curve downward and inward and frame their muzzle like quotation marks.
Aldworth has told us to approach seal pups on your knees, or even on your stomach, so you don't intimidate them with your height and bulk. Yet even with this precaution, pups usually flee at your initial presence. But if you stop and sit there, the pup will cease his movements, too, although he will typically turn his back to you, much like a dog curls into a ball on a couch, face buried deep in the cushions, when he wants privacy.
A seal pup's desire for privacy, however, is an uneasy one, and he will, like your dog back home on the sofa, constantly check over his shoulder to see if you're still there, his head twisted backward so that he appears to be viewing the world upside down. When he peeks at you, bashfully, his eyes flash tiny crescent moons of white at the corners, a sort of universal symbol of supplication with seals and dogs.
If you lie there long enough, some seal pups will surprise you. They will actually face you, amble toward you, and stare sweetly—and blankly—leaving you to wonder what's going on in those fur-covered noggins. Over a recent dinner, Dr. John Grandy, senior vice president of The HSUS's Wildlife department, recounted how, just two days earlier as he was lying on the ice, nearly a dozen seal pups started to gather around him, inching ever closer as the minutes ticked by. Aldworth explained that this huddling behavior is normal for pups, to which I responded:
"It sounds just like a puppy pile."
Sentimentalism or Evolution?
Back on dry land after my first trip to meet harp seals, I sheepishly tell Aldworth that they remind me of dogs. I'm expecting her to mock me for gross canine sentimentalism. Instead, she announces that there is indeed a legitimate connection between seals and dogs, and then, being a former Newfoundlander herself, she rolls the French name for harp seals off her tongue: loup-marin, which translates into "sea wolf."
I immediately shoot off an e-mail to The HSUS's marine mammal scientist, Dr. Naomi Rose, who explains that the "evolutionary origins of seals and seal lions is a bit murky." She says that seals definitely "belong to the same taxonomic category as dogs," but cautions that "they may have more in common with otters." And with that jump start—and the cautious admonition not to assume that these "evolutionary connections are responsible for behavior similarities like huddling"—Rose wishes me good luck on my research.
As Rose implies with her e-mail, the evolutionary origins of seals is controversial among those who theorize about such matters—well, except apparently for officials at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. On the DFO's web site, under the harp seal background page, the agency forthrightly says: Seals "apparently originated in the northern hemisphere and are derived from a stock of land-based flesh-eating mammals. The Norwegian name for the harp seal, Selhund, which means sea dog, and the French name, loup-marin, or sea wolf, aptly reflect the evolutionary origin of the harp seal."
Other scientists remain more skeptical on seal origins. Some taxonomists can't even decide what order in which to place pinnipeds, a group of animals that encompasses both eared seal and true (or earless) seal families, the latter of which includes harp seals. Some want to place pinnipeds under their own order Pinnipedia, while others claim pinnipeds do not merit a separate order and should be a suborder under order Carnivora, which includes dogs, cats, and bears.
Similar arguments play out over seal origins. Some scientists suggest the two families, eared seals and true seals, evolved from different land-based ancestors who took to the sea millions of years ago to take advantage of the food-rich waters (and, perhaps, to avoid predators). These scientists say the former family likely evolved from a bear-like or dog-like ancestor in the North Pacific, while the latter family (which includes harps) descended from an otter-like carnivore in the North Atlantic. And then there is the small group of scientists that believe all pinnipeds may have evolved from a common, bear-like ancestor more than 25 million years ago.
Who to believe? Who knows.
I personally like the mythological origin of seals that Marianne Riedman spells out in her 1990 book, Pinnipeds: Seals, Sea Lions, and Walruses:
…How seals evolved has always been perfectly clear to the Inuit Eskimos. The story they tell of the creation of seals revolves around Nuliajuk…. also known as Sedna the Eskimo girl. The Netsilik Eskimos worshipped Nuliajuk as their most powerful spirit—the mother of all the animals and the mistress of the sea and land. As one version of the story goes, Sedna and her father were at sea when some seabirds whom they had offended created a terrible storm. The father panicked and flung his daughter overboard as an offering to the birds. As Sedna clung to the edge of the boat, her father cut off her fingers, which, falling into the ocean, were transformed into seals and whales. Ever since, Sedna, or the spirit Nuliajuk, has controlled the weather and the seals, taking the animals away from the hunters when she is angry.
I like to think that Sedna is foot-stompingly mad right now. Mad about how many seals are killed in Canada, mad about how they are killed, and mad that the very animals she created are treated with such selfish contempt by commercial hunters. Perhaps she will take the animals away from sealers this year.
Tim Carman is the managing editor of hsus.org.
