Stormy, the Baby Seal

On Thursday, May 16, Lou and I sat in the cabin eating a late dinner.  It was already dark outside, but the weather was mild.  We still had our winter cover up because of our work on the decks and the relatively wet weather we’d been having, so we were enclosed and did not have much a view of what was happening on the docks.  But they were mostly quiet—earlier that week most of the lobster boats had vacated the docks for their summer moorings in harbors around the island.  A visiting yacht had come to town the day before,

Baby Stormy, suckling Evelyn.

and was berthed at the end of the dock with captain, crew, and owners aboard, so now and again we could hear their voices across the water as they relaxed on their aft deck.

As we talked we heard barking outside, and at first we dismissed it, thinking it was a dog, perhaps one aboard our visiting neighbor.  But the barking continued and moved, sounding as if it were coming from areas that we know are water.  We thought it might be a seal or otter, but then we were not so sure.  I wanted to go outside and check immediately, but Lou encouraged me to finish eating.

Meanwhile the sounds got closer, and soon they changed altogether—or were a different animal—we still were not certain.  Something was bumping its body against our boat, and then from the starboard side, just three feet behind where I sat, there was a distinct sucking sound!

We have had our winter cover up since November, so we have not moved Evelyn for six months.  Because of this sedentary state, she has a decent amount of growth on her bottom—an underwater garden, so to speak.  This aquatic farm is very popular with the ducks who spend their winter in Northeast Harbor, and we often hear the tick-tick-ticking of their bills as they nibble and snack on our bottom growth.  But the sound this night was different—the animal outside was not pecking, or pulling, or nibbling, or scratching—the

The little seal investigates the dock...

animal outside was sucking.

We grabbed our flashlights, climbed out to the docks, and walked around to get a view of Evelyn’s port side—and there aside our boat was the tiniest little seal we’d ever seen!  We aimed our lights at it, and our excitement quickly turned to horror.  The baby seal was twirling and spinning in and odd manner, making sucking and gurgling noises as it spun to the surface, and wrapped around its body was a line from the winter cover that once tied the cover down beneath the boat, but had recently broken loose.  I panicked, worried that the little seal was twisted in the line and drowning, and Lou ran to the dinghy dock to row over as quickly as he could.  As Lou rowed nearer I kept an eye on the little guy, making my voice calm and even and speaking words of encouragement like I would to a pet.  Lou arrived and once I was in the dinghy we worked alongside Evelyn until we reached the seal.  Lou took hold of the line and cut it, and as he did so it simply pulled away—the seal had not been caught, but was only playing with the line!  (Though I still felt better knowing that now the line was cut it could never get twisted).  It was such a relief.

As we pulled the line away the little seal continued to suck and spin clumsily against the boat.  We watched, and it seemed clear that the little guy was suckling Evelyn, as if she were its mother.  Then, the little seal turned and suckled the dinghy, moving around and around it as we watched.  The baby was so tiny, just about 18-24 inches, and had the sweetest puppy-dog eyes.  It was so adorable that it took all my fortitude to continually remind myself that hugging a baby seal would be harmful to the little creature (as well as to myself—I’ve seen their teeth!, unsafe, and of course illegal).  But it did look so huggable twirling in the clear dark water.

As it swam in circles around us—spinning as if it was still not quite accustomed to swimming straight—we noticed that its umbilical cord still hung from its underbelly and so became worried once again.  Was this adorable little seal sickly and rejected by its mother?  (Did seals do that?)  Was it lost?  Was its mother gone?  We realized we knew nothing about seal pups.

...then swims away...

The baby seal dived below the dock and then pulled its body up inside the dock’s layers, so that it was resting above the water but beneath the dock planks nearby our boat.  We too returned to the dock, and I made a phone call to Allied Whale, a marine mammal rescue center out of College of the Atlantic, and they kindly reassured me that everything was normal.  Umbilical cords stay attached to baby seals for a few days before they fall off, and mothers often leave the babes in a safe spot as they go out to fish and hunt to rebuild their strength.  When the babies are about a week old they begin to venture further with their mothers.  This particular little one had been reported by the yacht neighboring us that morning, and so had been checked, given shots, and was declared a healthy 3 to 5-day-old pup.  She told me to call again if the pup was still there days later, or if it began to hang around too closely to working boats that might accidentally harm it.

I was relieved to know the little one was okay, and so excited that I had the opportunity to watch such a young seal pup!  It was so much fun watching the babe wander around that I sat on the dock for the next few hours, watching the baby seal suckle our boat, the dock, investigate the neighboring lobster boat and floats and pilings.  It stayed within a very small area, often making the barking and whimpering noises we had first heard from below while inside Evelyn, which I now interpreted as crying.  When I at last went to bed, I could still hear the baby crying just a few feet away.  Its cries continued until dawn.

Because I like to name things, I named the seal pup Stormy, after Gosling’s “Stormy the Seal” of our favorite

...then nibbles on some seaweed.

evening drink, the dark and stormy, as well as the famous foal of Misty of  Chincoteague.  The next night I heard Stormy crying again and watched him swim a while—this time in a slightly larger radius.  I heard him again the next morning and then Lou and I left town and when we returned there was no sign of Stormy the seal.

But a friend has mentioned that when he’s on the water early in the morning—just at dawn—he sometimes sees a mother and pup on the rocks at the mouth of Northeast Harbor.  So I hope that perhaps I’ll see Stormy again this summer.  And I like to think that, perhaps, Stormy’s mother is Nori, the small seal that spent so much time hanging around our boat last winter, who I liked to watch swimming around in evenings when the lights illuminated the water.