Author: Aare Verliin
Ahoy, land creatures!
It’s me, grey seal Holger, sending greetings from the big rock by the coast! For several years now, this has been my favourite resting spot. During the day, the sun warms up the rock nicely, and then it’s so good just to lay here and listen to the lapping of the waves. Sometimes it sends me to sleep, and I take a nap. I’m safe here, as I’m surrounded by water, and no one can get too close to me because my hearing is impeccable. From time to time, when I get hungry, I listen whether there are any motor or rowing sounds coming from the nearby harbour. On calm evenings, there are usually several boats heading out to sea. After waiting for an hour or two, the fishermen have lowered their nets and gone back to the harbour. That’s the perfect time go and find the red flags that mark the nets and swim by them before it gets dark. My favourite fish are whitefish and trout with their tender meat. In open water without the nets, they often tend to slip away from under my nose. But with the fishermen’s nets, I don’t have to worry about that – it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet! I rest through the night and go for another snack early in the morning. Sometimes, the fisherman are hasty and try to pull the nets into their boats from right in front of me. Then sometimes we have a tug-of-war. I don’t know why it makes the people in the boat yell so much.
Anyway, the sea is often stormy here, and on those days, the fishermen don’t come out to sea. The other grey seals and I manage perfectly on our own. I swallow up smaller fish, such as Baltic herring and sprats underwater as I go. If I manage to catch a larger fish, like a cod or orfe, I come to the surface, hold it between my flippers, and then eat it.
I was born on a cold winter’s day, on a pebbly islet in the middle of the sea. I was a chubby baby and weighed 15 kilograms at birth. That’s more than three times heavier than newborn human babies! My mother’s milk is extremely nutritious – it contains twice as much fat as whipping cream. It helped me grow, and I gained 1–2 kilograms every day. Already after a month, I shed my white baby fur and was ready to begin my journey at sea. Now I have already seen more than twenty years and have become a lovely animal. I am about 2.5 metres long and weigh approximately 250 kilograms.
I am a great swimmer and can dive and touch the seabed at the deepest point in the Baltic Sea, the Landsort Trench, which is 459 metres below the surface. We grey seals can hold our breath for 20 minutes and have even dived as deep as 477 metres in the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes, when I feel like going for a longer journey, I have visited other seals on the coast of Finland and Sweden.
Generally, life is good here in Estonia, and we grey seals are doing quite well here. While our life was quite poor in the middle of the last century due to polluted water, extensive seal hunting, and a low birth rate, our life has improved significantly during this century. Around the turn of the millennium, there were 10 000 grey seals in the Baltic Sea. Our population has since grown four times! In 2021, 42 000 grey seals were counted. Around the Estonian coast alone, 6031 grey seals were counted last year! Currently, there are four times more seals in Estonian waters than there are wolves, lynxes and bears altogether on the Estonian mainland. So, if you would like to meet me, come to the sea! There’s a high chance that I will be waving at you from over here on my cosy rock.
Come meet me at seal safari! The best time for it is from the beginning of May until the end of July. See more about seal safari options here and here.
Baby seals are born in spring. As nesting time is not to be disturbed, you can safely observe newborn seals form the seal cam.