Stumbling Upon a Gray Seal... Literally!

BY: STEVE BIASETTI, GROUP FOR THE EAST END DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Gray seal hauled out on rocks. Photo: Atlantic Marine Conservation Society

Here’s a phrase I have never uttered before: “Yesterday I nearly tripped over a gray seal.” I was all the way east at Montauk Point, and had walked down the paved trail by the concession building to the beach. Turning right I headed towards the lighthouse, alternating my attention between the near-shore waters and the boulder-strewn beach. I had walked about one hundred yards when a loud hiss startled me out of my early-morning daze. Looking around, I realized that I had just walked by - and within twenty-four inches of - a sunbathing Gray Seal!

With its dried coat of fur, this seal had thoroughly blended in with the tan sand and light-brown rocks. Fortuitously I had passed the animal on its hind-end side, or it might have done more than hiss at me. Also cause for gratitude, this individual was a sub-adult of approximately four feet in length. A full-grown male gray seal, with its unflattering yet accurate nickname of “horsehead,” can grow to 10 feet long and 880 pounds. My hissing buddy – with its modest snout and light bulk - was much less menacing than an adult male.

Over the past 15 years gray seals have become an increasingly common sight around the Montauk peninsula. [Harbor seals are the common seal encountered around most of the rest of Long Island.] My sightings of gray seals have spanned the calendar from October through April. Of course, gray seals are usually seen swimming in the water or hauled out on near-shore boulders, not stumbled upon on the beach by unobservant humans!