Amazing Seal Spotting Cruise With Project Oceanology

     On Saturday the 27th of March I went on a seal spotting cruise with the researchers at Project Oceanology.  Project Oceanology is a "non-profit education and research facility dedicated to nurturing student and public interest and enthusiasm for marine sciences." You can read more about their seal watching cruises at the following link: https://www.oceanology.org/public-cruises.  I really enjoyed this experience!  I felt safe the whole time and saw many seals and other wildlife in the Long Island Sound. The crew members were very helpful, always kept us informed on what the spotting plan was, answered whatever questions we had, and pointed out wildlife that we would not have spotted otherwise.

The boat we were on, R/V (Research Vessel) Enviro-Lab II. 

All images in this post were taken by me.

For those of you who are not familiar with New England, the collage below shows the location where the seal spotting cruise took place, and where we saw the seals (the red circles).  We went to four places where the researchers more commonly see seals:  West Clump, Middle Clump, East Clump, and Hungry Point.


On our first stop at West Clump we saw 28 Harbor Seals hauled out on rocks, with none of them bottling (bottling is when seals float upright in water with only their heads sticking out).  That there were 28 hauled out seals I know from a whiteboard where the researchers recorded the number of seals hauled out and bottling at each location.  In the collage below, the whiteboard is shown in the upper-right side, with the information for West Clump boxed in red.

Photos of the seals at West Clump are below...




One of the things that surprised me about seeing Harbor Seals in the wild is how absolutely huge and plump they are.  I wonder if they have a "winter blubber" thickness that they work off later in the summer - this is something that I will look into.  I am not sure that this is the case, because they will migrate north around April/May from this region up to the colder waters of Maine and Canada.  Maybe they migrate because they do not have an ability to loose the insulating blubber, or maybe they are plumper because they are building up energy reserves for the long swim north as waters warm in the Sound.

On Middle Clump we saw 6 Harbor Seals hauled out, with none of them bottling:






On East Clump there were 13 round (including some slightly confused-looking) Harbor Seals hauled out, with none bottling.







At Hungry Point we saw 32 Harbor Seals hauled out, and 22 bottling:


    


Bottling Harbor Seals - circled in yellow.

For those of you who follow me on Instagram, we also saw Sir.chonkers at Hungry Point!


At Hungry Point, there were a lot of Harbor Seals bottling and swimming.  I wonder if the area is known as "Hungry Point" due to all of the seals swimming in the water compared to the other locations catching fibsh (how seals pronounce "fish" - please see previous post).  I had never seen a seal that was not in an aquarium bottle, and that was an enjoyable experience.  



After we left Hungry Point, we went over to the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound to see if there were any seals.  A few of us on the boat only saw one seal bottling at some point after we passed a lighthouse, as shown below:


I am not sure if this seal is a Harbor Seal or a Gray Seal, and we didn't really get a close look because he was far away when we saw him.  He does appear to have the "long snout" appearance of a Gray Seal (which are in the area, but not in large numbers like the Harbor Seals).  He does look somewhat British as do all Grey Seals, and I thought I heard somebody ask if we "could spare a spot of tea, please" right before we saw him.  Still, I am not entirely sure.


The identification card shown above is from a photo of the educational material available to us on the cruise.  As you can see below, there was a lot of reference material, and you could also (if you wanted to) fill out observation data sheets on the seals during the cruise.

While seals were the focus of the cruise, there were many birds visible and were discussed by the researchers onboard.  I didn't get too many pictures of the birds, but I took a nice picture of two seagulls at the dock:










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