(click on images to enlarge)
This "ghostly apparition" of a dead grey seal pup is a natural extension of ordinary adaptive changes often encountered among marine mammals. During our visit their were approximately 20 nursing pups on Melmerby Beach...using crude estimations, this single individual represents about a 5% mortality rate.
However, as the weeks progressed it was reported that pupping fatalities were increasing and (DFO) officials were asking the public to stay back a few hundred feet from the females and their young, in the belief, that the crowds and associated noises were causing the new mothers to abandon their offspring.
After a new birth, an inseparable bond is created between mother and pup - seals have a keen sense of smell...by way of touching and sniffing her newborn, the singleness of a mothers "ancestral devotion" is instantly formed - females have a "deep rooted" tendency towards "protectionism" of their young, and this seems to be an inherent quality found throughout the animal kingdom...it is plausible that in all likelihood, separation would depend exclusively on the individual seal or entirely as a result of "loss of life" of the parent - noisy crowds I suspect would be an aggravation rather than a cause for "complete abandonment" on behalf of the female grey seal.
The potential does perhaps exist - if an offspring is contaminated by human "odor" the young newborn could be rejected...mysterious how nature works-more accurately though, for a healthy female to refuse to nurse her pup, she may innately sense that something is wrong and respond according to the ways commonly followed by nature...
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of words. Much of the damage inflicted on the [sea] land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologists must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be a doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
Aldo Leopold, Ecologist...[sea]"my insert"
The following pictures characterize a preciousness we unmindfully take for granted...("No commercial distribution"...but, feel free to use any grey seal pictures you wish - just credit the "Grey Seal Conservation Society (GSCS)" located in Halifax, Nova Scotia as the source...)
