Harp Seal Nursery

Atlantic seal pups depend on this beautiful world of ice off Canada’s Magdalen Islands

- Jennifer Hayes

When you walk on sea ice, it’s easy to forget that there’s an ocean below you. This frozen world is stripped down to essentials: impossibly blue sky, bright sun bouncing off fresh snow, wind that vibrates like a cello, whiteness all around.

Then I hear the distant chorus of infant cries and I stand still, listening. It’s a precious moment that I want to appreciate fully before I pull out my cameras. I catch a slight movement in a ridge of snow ahead—a gentle and clumsy wave of a tiny flipper. I see a pup nestled inside a small snow cave molded by body heat and movement, protected from the wind. Its colouring is still tinged with hints of yellow from amniotic fluid.

I choose a spot a polite distance away and kneel in the snow, watching and waiting, noting the date: March 8, 2019. I hear sloshing water and short grunting breaths before I see a whiskered face with big dark eyes rise and survey the surroundings from a nearby hole in the ice. The female emerges, using curved claws to pull herself onto and across the ice to her pup. They meet with a nose-to-nose kiss of recognition that establishes kinship: Are you my pup? Are you my mother? The female turns to gauge my presence, determines I am no threat, and settles onto her side, shuts her eyes, and begins to nurse.