U.S. seal populations have rebounded — and so have their conflicts with humans
A new book unpacks the messy aftermath of a conservation success story
After decades of being endangered, seal populations have rebounded in North America. A new book explores growing tensions between the animals and humans.
Douglas Klug/Getty Images
A Year with the Seals
Alix Morris
Algonquin Books, $30
“Hello there!” “Hey, you!” “Get outta there!” These are only a few of the phrases that brought tourists flocking to Boston’s New England Aquarium to see its chattiest resident: Hoover the harbor seal. Before joining the aquarium in 1971, Hoover was under the care of Maine fisherman George Swallow and his wife, Alice. The couple kept the orphaned seal in their backyard pond after discovering that the pup’s mother had been fatally shot by another fisherman.
George, well aware of Hoover’s talents, informed aquarium staff that Hoover could mimic human speech. They, naturally, were skeptical, and Hoover seemed quiet enough when he arrived. But things changed in 1978, when staff members witnessed Hoover saying his own name in George’s gruff, New England accent. That single utterance soon turned into a full repertoire of shouts and belly laughs that entertained crowds until Hoover’s death in 1985.
Hoover is one of many characters populating the pages of Alix Morris’ new book, A Year with the Seals. Season by season, the science writer hits the road to various parts of the United States and Canada to itch her curiosity regarding the recovery of these creatures, which were once endangered in North America. Morris’ book isn’t your typical conservation read, though. Instead of detailing the plight of species at risk, it examines what happens when conservation efforts succeed.
By the mid-20th century, the United States’ two resident seal species, the gray and the harbor, were hunted to the brink of extinction because they were considered direct competitors of the fishing industry. Since the enactment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, their numbers have bounced back. But “as seal populations have rebounded,” Morris writes, “so too have conflicts with humans — particularly fishermen.” Easing such tensions is no easy task. The 253-page book looks mainly to New England for answers, with occasional excursions to the Pacific Northwest and Nova Scotia.
In Tacoma, Wash., Morris meets with members of the Puyallup Tribe, who are competing with seals and their larger cousins, sea lions, for diminishing salmon stocks. Among them is Ramona Bennett, an activist behind the “Fish Wars,” a series of protests in the 1970s against regulations infringing on tribal fishing rights. For decades, the Puyallup had faced legislation chipping away at their federally protected right to harvest salmon, a vital traditional food source. For Bennett, seal hunting bans continue to impose on their way of life by increasing competition for a wild salmon supply that’s already been degraded by increased industrialization and salmon farming.
Along New England’s coasts, rising white shark populations are rattling communities, despite the rarity of attacks on humans. Federal protections for the sharks, established in the 1990s, are behind the boom. But seals, a key prey for white sharks, receive much of the blame. Despite federal bans on killing seals, frustrated locals call for culls to help “close the restaurant.”
Sometimes, it’s “the people who love and want to help the seals the most who end up doing the most harm,” Morris notes. Her time observing staff at Marine Mammals of Maine, a rehabilitation center, acts as a motif throughout the narrative. In one harrowing outing, Morris tags along during a rescue call for an abandoned seal pup. When the team arrives on the scene, the caller is taking a selfie with the sea creature under his arm. Such seal handling is considered harassment and is illegal under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, with violators subject to hefty fees and up to a year of prison time. A week later, Morris learns that the pup died, most likely succumbing to dehydration and malnutrition from abandonment. The stress from the harassment probably didn’t help.
Morris meanders seamlessly between the two worlds of seal advocates and their critics. Much of the book leans on how wildlife conflicts have their roots in our society’s economic and racial disparities. Those “who claim to be nature purists, advocating for total protections for wildlife, are often those with the least amount to lose,” Morris writes. More importantly, she demonstrates how the two opposing sides come together: “Perhaps the loudest anti-seal voices have been those of fishermen, but fishermen are also the ones calling the Marine Mammals of Maine hotline to report stranded seals in every season.”
Morris never does learn the secret to mediating tensions between seal conservationists and their critics. Instead, A Year with the Seals reassesses the very question in need of asking: “Perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether or how to control nature, but how to control ourselves.”
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