Harp Seals on the South Shore

Omnipresent seals

In Sainte-Flavie, one resident came across several seals during a stroll near the shoreline. From the wheel of his vehicle, another observer reports seeing thousands of these animals on his drive from Rimouski to Gaspé! “Harp seals have settled on the thin ice near Sandy Beach, sheltered from the waves and wind. There are nearly 200 of them,” explains a woman from the Gaspé Peninsula. And the sightings just keep pouring in! On January 15, a wildlife photographer headed out in search of a snowy owl near the Carleton wharf. To her great surprise, she came across a seal. “A rather exceptional encounter,” she describes.

Adult harp seals are primarily recognizable by their white colour with a black harp-shaped band across their backs, hence the species’ name. Females do not always show this colour pattern, however. Every year between late February and early March, female harp seals gather by the thousands to give birth to their pups (article in French) on the ice floes. However, declining ice cover in recent years has been pushing them to the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Large blows, humpback whale and a bald eagle

A number of large cetaceans have passed by Tadoussac. One enthusiast shares her observation: “There were three large spouts off the dunes yesterday! […] They were very active… They only dived for a few minutes, moved around a lot and at times I saw what might have been an indication of surface feeding (lots of foam just after the blow).” A harbour seal surprised two Côte-Nord residents during their lunch break when it surfaced in the Saguenay Fjord. On the other side of the St. Lawrence, a humpback whale apparently approached close to the coast at the entrance to Gaspé Bay. At Pointe-à-la-Croix in Les Escoumins, one bird brought a smile to the faces of a couple of observers. They claim that “a bald eagle thought it was a seal, drifting along on a chunk of ice offshore.” While it is common to see seals resting on the ice floes, this is indeed an unusual sighting!