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Harbour Seal
Also called: Common Seal.
Images coming soon.
- Length
- 4 feet.
- Description
- Colouration variable; generally yellowish-gray above irregularly spotted with black, beneath yellowish-white with small black spots. Often dark-brown everywhere varied with light spots. First toe never longer than the second.
- Range
- North Atlantic south occasionally to New Jersey and in Europe to Mediterranean, replaced on the Pacific by the closely allied Palla's seal. (Phoca largha Pallas.)
Three distinct species of the genus Phoca occur on the eastern coast of North America: the harbour seal, ringed seal and harp seal. The last two are of Arctic distribution, while the first and best-known species is found as far south as the coast of New England and the Middle States.
All the seals are gregarious, especially during the breeding season, and are migratory to a greater or less extent, the harbour seal being apparently less of a wanderer than the others. The harbour seal is also distinctly a coast species, seldom venturing far to sea, and living and breeding on the exposed rocky ledges along the shore. The others, on the contrary, are found out in the open ocean and frequent the ice floes of the northern seas.
Young seals at birth are covered with a thick white woolly coat, which is later supplanted by the ordinary hair, and until the change occurs they do not take to the water. As a rule, but one young is produced each year; sometimes it is born upon the bare rocks, while in case of the ringed seal an excavation is made under the snow communicating with a hole through the ice, and here the young remains for several weeks, tended by the mother.
The two northern species, more especially the harp sea, which is easily killed in numbers on its breeding ground, furnish most of the skins and oil of commerce. Their skins, however, while of considerable value for leather, are not to be confused with the beautiful hides of the Alaskan fur seal or "sea bear" which furnish the valuable sealskin of the furrier.
On the New England coast the harbour seals may be looked for at any time of the year, but farther south they are seldom seen except in winter, haunting inlets and the mouths of rivers.
The first one that I ever had an opportunity of observing I met in its native element in August. We were both swimming just inside the river's mouth at Hampton, N. H.; its round head broke the surface between myself and the boat, showed wet and shining for a few seconds and was gone, to appear again bobbing around at the edge of the breakers on the bar.
Seals appear to be the most abundant along the New England coast late in summer and autumn when they may be seen from time to time swimming by the headlands or sprawling on the wave-splashed rocks and beaches; the young are said to be born at this season in caves just out of reach of the tide.
Although the seals are just as warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals as any, their race has lived in the sea for so long that they have become almost as aquatic as fish; in fact, fish chased by seals have been known to look for safety in the shallow ripples at the edge of the strand and on sand-flats, as if aware that their pursuers were even more incapable and helpless than themselves when partly ashore. The seals always seek protection from their own enemies in deep water and fish there by preference.
The common seal of our harbours appears to be as little adventurous and seafaring as any of its kind, keeping near the land at all times and hunting inlets and the mouths of rivers which it enters with the incoming tide, sometimes swimming inland for one hundred miles or more between wooded banks and farm-lands, where it may fish in still pools out of reach of the ocean's growling.
By nature it is gentle and affectionate, quickly becoming tame if well treated and fond of being caressed and made much of; a genial, well-meaning creature without much instinctive fear of man and eager to make friends with any animal that will meet it fairly. Yet men persist in shooting at them on every occasion, though a dead seal of this species is of little value, either to commerce or science, and the fishermen and duck hunters tell me that not one in every fifty that are killed is ever secured. The harm seals do to sea fishermen must be of little account, except on a few occasions, when they get into the habit of robbing nets; and as they have few enemies in this latitude, they might well be allowed to become familiar and common features of our beaches and summer resorts. Sharks and swordfish are about their worst enemies, and it is said that the seals are not safe from their attacks even when resting on floating ice far out of the water, for these great ravenous brutes of the sea have been seen to throw themselves half out of water on the edge of the ice and overbalance it sufficiently as to force the unfortunate seal to slide down its slippery surface within their reach. Along the rough Labrador coast and still farther north, the polar bears catch them in a somewhat similar manner; swimming well around to the leeward of the unsuspecting seal asleep on the ice-floe, they dive and make their hidden approach beneath the surface, only rising once or twice for breath before reaching the edge of the ice where they have effectually cut off the seal's retreat to the water.