Seal Watching At the Maritime Aquarium!

Last week I spent a day watching the five female Harbor Seals at The Maritime Aquarium At Norwalk, in Connecticut. I really liked the layout of the Seal exhibit, since the Seals can be indoors or outdoors whenever they wanted, they had a long stretch of swimming area to be happy and stay active, and they had enough rocks to lay on. Even though the enclosure looks slightly smaller as compared to some other aquariums and zoos, it had a deep "figure eight" layout which gave the Seals a lot of uninterrupted distance to swim.  There was always at least one staff member watching the exhibit to ensure the safety of both the Seals and the visitors.

I liked how you could get close to the Seals without them or you getting hurt.  In the indoor part there is a large glass area where you can view the Seals from a underwater viewpoint.

 

You don't always have to look through glass to see the Seals up close, because at both the indoor and outdoor areas you can get close to the railings to look over and see the Seals very clearly.  This is really good for getting a relatively close and personal experience with them, but still keeping both you and the Seals safe and stress-free.

I also noticed how the Seals did something known as bottling, which is when Seals position themselves in the water vertically to come up and get air or look around, as shown by the photo beside this text. Most of the time the Seals were swimming, but they would often stop and rest for a few minutes in the bottling position. When they do this, it gives you a good opportunity to see them breath through their nostrils and see their teeth when they yawn. You can also get a really close view of their long adorable whiskers.

  

  

Most of the time the Seals were swimming or bottling, but sometimes they rested on the bottom of the pool and sunned themselves underwater, and then came back up for air every once in a while.  I did not see any of the Seals on the rocks, except for their feeding and training sessions, but we were told that they haul themselves out to sleep at night.  After watching them on-and-off for six hours, all of the Seals looked very healthy and happy, interacted well with the feeding/training staff, and were very well cared for.  The exhibit was kept clean, and the staff explained how they kept the water appropriately salty to reproduce the Seals' ocean environment.  

I highly recommend going to the Maritime Aquarium for your Seal-viewing needs.  The Maritime Aquarium also has many other sea creatures and land animals there that were very interesting, of course.

All photos in the post are my personal photos taken at The Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut.