27 May, 2008

Others cool off in the Atlantic, while some young seals call for their mothers in the crowded colony.

You can hear them and you can smell them long before you see them. I'm referring to Cape fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus), which we set out to film on the rocky outcrop that is the Cape Cross seal reserve in Namibia.

There are approximately 25 seal colonies along the Namibian and South African coasts. Seal counts vary at each location, but it would be safe to say that currently there more than 300 000 seals at any given time.

The baby seals (pups) that we saw at Cape Cross were about four to five months old, having been born in November and December last year.

I noticed that the adults spent most of their time sleeping and basking in the sun on the hot rocks. Their few waking moments were used to scratch and rearrange their bulky bodies into a more comfortable sleeping position or to fight off any neighbours getting too close for comfort.

It’s difficult to determine what distance their personal space is, because there were many thousands of them closely packed on a patch of rocks and frolicking in the nearby sea. By careful observation, I established that the seals in the water were not attempting to chase or eat any fish.

The seals seemed content to float and swim in the waves and shallow waters, presumably to cool off after a long day in the sun.

The sea in which the seals were swimming is the Atlantic Ocean, fed by the cold Benguela current. Their thick fur coats are specially adapted to withstand cold-water conditions, since they have two layers – a harder outer layer which gets wet and a soft inner layer which stays dry. The inner layer, together with the fat formation under the seals’ skins, gives them the protection they need against very cold water.

I spent some time filming young seals that appeared to be lost. Many of them crawled around bleating and calling for their mothers in the crowd.

This seemed a futile task to me, since there were so many adult seal mothers, many of which took breaks to cool off in the inviting water. Sometimes, when the mother seals returned, the pups had moved off, so they lost contact with their mothers. Baby seals and their mothers apparently find one another by smell and by recognition of individual voice calls.

An unusual sighting was a lone 'beachmaster' or bull seal in the colony. Males usually visit the colony only during the breeding season, mid to late October each year, when there is lots of jostling and ferocious fighting between the large males. Today, this bull had no competition.

I left the seal colony thinking that this scene had probably not changed much from that day in 1486 when the first documented European explorer, a Portuguese captain named Diego Cao, landed on these very shores.

– by Pierre Minnie, Earth-Touch crew © Earth-Touch

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