Harp Seal Nursery
Reader's Digest UK|July 2021
Atlantic seal pups depend on this beautiful world of ice off Canada’s Magdalen Islands
Jennifer Hayes
Harp Seal Nursery
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.

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