A YEAR WITH THE SEALS

Our fin-footed friends (and foes).

With their big flirty eyes, they are modern man’s pet “sea dogs.” With their haunting, near-human voices, they were the sirens of ancient mariners. With their unexpected humor (“Hey you. Get outta there!” a seal named Hoover habitually barked, complete with Boston accent, at startled New England Aquarium visitors), they are animal celebrities par excellence, regular headliners. Flippers be damned, seals are human animals, so much so that Nordic and Celtic legends worship part-seal, part-human selkies. But with their rapier teeth and sentient whiskers that identify prey in any ebb-and-flow of water, seals have also been one of our biggest archnemeses. Because they are such superior “fishermen,” seals have deprived us of the food we’ve needed at countless historic junctures. One result: We have passed laws both to conserve seals and to cull them. Morris, a masterful storyteller, has done full justice to these creatures of the deep. A visit to a remote island of 400,000 seals yields much beautifully described seal sturm und drang. The island is a mating site, so it is, in one way, “National Geographic on steroids. The seals didn’t come to socialize, they came to further their species. Pup, nurse, mate, survive. The plump, wide-eyed pups were fearful. Their mothers were deflated balloons, weakened by their sacrifice. The males were battle-scarred.” But as this is also a site where seals live unbothered by their human bêtes noires, it is also like stepping into a “watercolor painting” by Bob Ross. Still, the author concludes that our fascination with both the humanity in nature and the nature in humanity will result in our reconciling the two—when it comes to seals, anyway. “Perhaps the loudest anti-seal voices have been those of fishermen,” she muses. “But fishermen are also the ones calling the Marine Mammals of Maine hotline to report stranded seals in every season.”

A wondrous look at our love-hate relationship with the most human of animals.