In the last weekend of November, I had the great pleasure of going to see a colony of seals. These animals have their pups in a place called Donna Nook on the Lincolnshire coast and, for the few weeks they are there, are a popular tourist attraction in the area.
It was a rainy day. An extremely rainy day. A so-rainy-it-soaked-through-my-boots-and-leather-jacket day but it was also quite a magical one. The car sloshed into the field used as a car park and we squelched up to the sand bank. As we climbed it, we heard this peculiar noise - was it seals, birds or people? It was hard to tell. I’d brought binoculars in case they were hard to see. These were not needed.
We came over the sand bank and they were there. Hundreds of seals, all slumped over the beach, some sleeping, some suckling little white pups and some groaning and hissing. There’s a fence to stop the people wandering around the seals (as they formally did) and some seals were right up to it, scratching themselves on the wire. They are the most wonderfully ridiculous animals, belching out their strange calls and flopping around like someone stuck in a sleeping bag.
There was something magical about seeing these strange creatures, patting each other on the back with their flippers, seeming to have belly-flop races and hissing at another seal who tried to take their spot. I’d always thought of them as cute, but the way their faces seemed stuck on the top of their bodies reminded me of blemmyes, the mythical people with heads in their stomachs.
As I stood there, soaked to the bone, it was also quite clear to me how ridiculous we humans are. We’d all schlepped out to the middle of nowhere, paid parking charges for a field of mud and shivered out in the pouring rain to see these other creatures who were fine and comfortable as they were. The fact is, seeing seals during birthing season is seeing them at their worst - they aren’t good on land but they are amazing at sea. They sleep upright in the water like buoys, with self closing nostrils if they dip down. They can dive for 200 metres and stay under water for half an hour. They swim hundreds of miles between colony sites. Laying on the beach, half-starved, worn out from childbirth, they still managed to be captivating and interesting creatures.
As usual, when I have a little animal adventure, I like to go to Goldsmith’s History of the Natural World. I was surprised to find the seal listed amongst the mammals, whales, dolphins and turtles are lumped in with fish. It’s a long entry, and it feels like Goldsmith may actually have seen seals because he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, not just copying from an encyclopaedia.
His description conveys how odd a seal looks, with some elements like a quadruped and some like a fish. He describes them having a round head like a man, broad nose like an otter and teeth like a dog. He describes their skeletal structure, like other mammals but covered in fur and membranes to create a fish-like shape.
He also feels that, while seals are not more cunning than many land animals, they are more cunning than fish - which gives them an advantage. He describes how they hunt in groups, gathering on large shoals of fish, and how they are largely social. He talks about their different calls (and we could tell different calls in the seals we met) but he didn’t know how much of their communication involves slapping their fin-arms.
My favourite section of any Goldsmith animal entry is the one about whether they are tasty, or useful to humans in any respect… it’s such a self-interested thing to have in a natural history book. He says the skin is good for making waterproof waistcoats and that they have been regarded as a good meal, with Edward IV eating one at Archbishop Nevil’s house.
He finishes by describing their migration habits, the reason why we had to go to Donna Nook to see them when we did, rather than wait for better weather.
However, Goldsmith is not the only one of my favourites to mention seals in his writing. Christopher Smart did as well.
The first time I read Jubilate Agno, one of the things that stuck into my head was the phrase, “the Great Flabber Dabber Flat Clapping Fish with hands”. It turns out these were seals.
Yes, he’s done what I was expecting Goldsmith to do, lumping them in with fish, but he’s done so with such brio that I have to praise him for it. In the poem, Smart lumps the seals in with Psalm 98;
“Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy”
So, for Smart, it’s the seals who will be the sea’s chief clappers of hands and I think it’s worth applauding the seal.
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