The Mast-Head: Well-Fed and Happy
Memorial Day weekend is when the seals abandon the South Fork beaches, turning them over to the summer crowd. But, well-fed and happy, they remain in the area, just slinking off to remote places to relax. Kind of like the locals.
Seals were thick like ticks this winter on the ocean beach. We know this because police were called with surprising frequency by people alarmed that something might be wrong. Most times, there was not. Seals, like people, enjoy stretching out on the sand from time to time. Bobbing around in the waves all day eating all that herring must get tiring.
Cops would go have a look and call the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Conservation with a report if an animal looked unwell. The foundation is equipped to rehabilitate ill seals in a spa-like setting at Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, where visitors can peer at the patients as they regain their strength while circling in large plastic pools and dining on the finest fish. There’s even a web cam, and one can look, voyeuristically, at their doings, if one wishes.
The foundation’s staff answers a stranding hotline, 631-369-9829, and can usually tell from a caller’s description if a seal needs help or is just napping. They are also happy to get photos or video of possibly stranded seals, sea turtles, and whales at [email protected].
The seal population here seems to be rising, which is probably why the number of sightings phoned in to police and the foundation is increasing. I think it also is because it is quite puzzling to see one of them on the beach, just lying there, making no attempt to escape as a person or dog gets close. A wild creature should rush away, we think, so we assume it is sick when it does not, and, filled with pity, we go into action.
Seals have big, dog-like dark eyes, which are just on the edge of expressive. We take their doleful looks as their cry for help; rather, it is curiosity. People who are on the water a lot know well the way seals pop their heads out of the water and stare, almost rudely. Sitting on our surfboards in our black wetsuits, surfers could be forgiven for mistaking their directness for amorous intent. It can be disconcerting.
A former East Hampton Star reporter, on the other hand, said he took their staring as an invitation to fight. He announced that every time he saw a seal in the water he was filled with the urge to wrestle. Myself, I think seals are hilarious and have suggested to Peter Spacek, The Star’s cartoonist, that he do seal gags. So far, he has not taken me up on it.
The other thing about seals is that they are food — for sharks, big sharks, like the 3,400-pound radio-tagged great white known as Mary Lee, which prowled close to Wiborg’s Beach in East Hampton Village earlier this month, according to her satellite tracking data. It’s a safe bet that she had zero interest in calling the cops.