Grey Seals

Overview

Grey seals haul out in grey crowds on the skerries and island shores of the Tidelace Coasts and the sounds of the Soundchain Roads, and swim the shoals of the Tidebound Reaches. They eat the same fish the inshore boats are after and take them out of the nets when they can, and the fishers curse them. Gnome sounding houses note them in their ledgers for another reason: where the seals gather, the fish are running.

Appearance

A grown grey seal is as long as a tall man lying down and much heavier, a sleek, tapering body with a rounded head, large dark wet eyes, long whiskers, and no visible ears. Its front flippers are short with claws, its hind flippers held together like a fish's tail. The coat is grey, from silver to slate, blotched and spotted darker, and dries paler on the rocks. Bulls are bigger, darker, and long-nosed. Ashore a seal humps along clumsily on its belly; in the water it is swift and graceful. Hauled-out seals moan, snort, and wail, a long eerie sound that carries through fog, and a haul-out smells of fish and old oil.

Habitat and Range

They breed and rest on skerries, offshore islands, and the remoter rocky shores, and feed in the sounds, straits, and shoals around them. They are commonest along the outer isles and the Soundchain sounds, and come into the harbours rarely, to rob the quays.

Behaviour and Temperament

Seals feed alone in the water on fish, eels, squid, and crabs, diving long and deep, and gather in crowds to rest on the rocks between tides. They are curious and will follow a boat or watch a person on the shore with only the head showing. They are timid ashore and slide into the water when approached, but a bull guarding cows in the breeding season will charge a person on the rocks and bite hard.

Life Cycle

Cows give birth to a single white-furred pup on the rocks in autumn, nurse it for a few weeks on rich milk, and leave it. The pup sheds its white coat and goes to sea alone. Seals live twenty or thirty years.

Uses and Dangers

To the inshore fishers seals are rivals and thieves, tearing fish from nets and lines and breaking the nets. Coastal Human hamlets take pups and young seals in autumn for their skins, which make boots and coats that shed water, and for the oil of their fat, burned in lamps. Gnome harbours mostly let them be. Pilots and sounders read them: a sound full of seals is a sound full of fish, and a ledger that notes the seals' numbers over many years notes the fish's too.

Lore and Belief

Human hamlets on the Tidelace tell of seals that come ashore as people on midsummer nights, and of fishers' children found on the shingle in the morning with a seal's dark eyes. Fishers say killing a seal at sea brings a storm. The Thaluren know seals as quick, harmless neighbours of the shoals, and a seal among the kelp is a sign that the blackfins are not near.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals