Is it normal to see seals on the ice?

Calls made to 1-877-7baleine since the end of last year were mostly from witnesses who observed seals lying on the ice off of Matane, Sainte-Flavie and even in Verdun (near Montréal). If the animal appears to be wiggling around and seems to be “struggling” on the pack ice, is it really in trouble?

Life of a seal

Seals are excellent swimmers and spend most of their time in the water. They hunt, travel, and even rest there. Everything about a seal’s morphology reflects an excellent adaptation to aquatic life: its streamlined body, the pointed tip of its muzzle and the absence of external appendages: seals lack pinnae (external ears) and their genitals are internal.

But seals should not be in the water continuously. They return to shore or climb onto the pack ice for any number of reasons: to rest, to warm up, to dry out, to calve and to moult (annual shedding of fur). Seals are amphibious mammals in the same way as sea lions. The main difference between the two lies in the shape of their rear body.

Sea lions have retained the ability to move about on land “on all fours” using their foreflippers, which they can tuck under their bodies. Seals use their rear flippers exclusively for swimming. They cannot turn these flippers forward in order to move. Rather, they remain an extension of their bodies. In order to move out of water, they must thus crawl by undulating on their bellies. Also, their small foreflippers cannot be used to support their body weight when they sit up to move forward. Seals look quite clumsy on land, even though they are in great shape!