Seals Aren't Cute

New Zealand is a beautiful country. Our expectations were high; everyone says that New Zealand is a beautiful country, and we were beginning to worry that we’d end up disappointed. Not so. In the past week we’ve already taken the best drives I can remember, through green (and occasionally blooming yellow) mountains, around cliffs, and along the wide, rocky coast. So why am I using my first post about New Zealand to complain about seals?

A few reasons, really. The obvious one is that I’m just a complainer. If I took a read through this blog now, I’m pretty sure that even I would roll my eyes at the amount of complaining I’ve done. It’s just that new cultures and experiences provide a wealth of new material to complain about, and I need to keep myself in shape.

More importantly, though, I’m using this post to complain about seals because they’re a menace. Sure, their bodies look like lard-jellybeans rounded off into a couple of ping-pong paddles for legs, and their style of locomotion can best be described as “lift, undulate and flop.” This makes you think at first that they’re so impossibly goofy that they must be harmless. In this case, looks are deceiving.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; the backstory first. Claire and I rented a car in Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island (population: 345,000!!) and drove up to Kaikoura, a city along the east coast of the South Island famous for its coastal scenery and marine life. We planned on a quick stop just to do the 2-hour walking loop along the coast (which is technically an unmarked trail) and up to the official, cliffside track. Well, the coastal track is beautiful. Rocky, with clear blue water lapping at gorgeous rock formations. After we had walked for about an hour, we came to what looked like a path up the cliff, which had been blocked off by a wire fence and a couple of oddly placed benches. We figure, this can’t be the path to the cliffside track; it wouldn’t be closed. So we press on.

After about 15 minutes, we come upon a reclining seal, looking much like the sedentary gelatinous blobs you’ve seen at the zoo. This isn’t surprising, as we’d heard there was a resident seal colony, though it generally suns itself at the beginning of the trail. This particular foul-tempered blob trains its black eyes on us as we tiptoe past about 10 feet away between it and the waterline, but it grudgingly lets us pass without incident.

(From this point, you can open a new tab and follow along with our handy visual reference guide!)

Next, we step up onto a rocky ledge, where we immediately spot a huge bull seal lying on the ledge about 10 feet in front of us. He clearly isn’t too happy with our presence, and gives us a small roar to make his presence known.

Now you may be saying, “Roar? Lions roar. Seals clap their hands giddily and absurdly snort “Arrt! Arrt!” Well, this guy wasn’t Flipper. When it wants to, a seal can let out a roar which sounds like a combination of a growling pit bull and a low, powerful belch. It also tends to show you a bit of teeth, in case you may think that its bark isn’t accompanied by a bite. Still, we figure that he’s just letting us know he’s there, and we have enough room to walk around him against the rock wall. So we do, whereupon we immediately spot a third seal lounging underneath a nearby boulder.

Now, here’s where I make my key mistake. I don’t think to myself, “hey, Aaron, you’ve seen three seals in a small space. They have teeth, they’re foul-tempered and unfathomably blobby. Maybe you should turn back.” No, instead I stubbornly think “Oh, I have plenty of room to walk between these two seals onto that ledge near the waterline. God forbid I miss out on more of this lovely coastline.” So we tiptoe between the two seals, about 7 feet or so from each. The one beneath the rock turns over and stares, and the big bull gives us another, less forgiving roar this time. But we sneak past, feeling relieved to have left this mammalian obstacle behind. After a step down to a rock near the water and a quick step right back up to the next ledge, we peer ahead, and that’s when we see the colony.

There are seals everywhere. They’re blobbily reclining all over the rocks ahead of us, each about 5 feet from the next. Immediately, we know that we’ve reached the end of this road; we’d basically need to step over the seals to move on, and with the reception we’d just received even I could tell see that this would be unwise. We quickly resolved to turn back, and the only option seemed to be retracing our steps. I stepped back down and then up again to the ledge, and looked uneasily at the seals we’d just snuck past. Both were staring intently at me. I began to creep slowly forward to the space between the two, and that’s when the big bull decided to let me know that he’d had enough.

You may never have experienced it before, but take it from me: when a seal is really pissed off, you know. In a split second, the bull had flipped his lardy body upright onto his ping-pong paddles and let out a roar that was a far cry from anything you’ve ever heard out of Flipper. It worked; my heart jumped and I instinctively retreated a few steps on the ledge. Hell, it was so terrifying that I would have retreated right into the water if I didn’t have the room. He settled back down to a reclining position, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off me from that point on.

So here we are, in the middle of a seal colony. We can’t go forward or we’ll trip over the things, but we can’t go back because there’s a bull who thinks he’s Oliver Cromwell. Just to take another look around I step back down near the water, and another, previously unseen seal pops his head out though the rocks in front of me and roars in my face. He wiggles himself free and dives in the water, swimming right past Claire, who is, at this point, quaking in fear at pretty much anything that moves.

Well, shit.

A good 5 minutes passes, during which we stare at the seals, and the seals stare at us. A passing speedboat whale-watching tour shimmies up about 600 meters away, the human contents of which probably wondering at the idiotic tourists standing stranded on the rocks with their cameras in the middle of a seal colony. I can only imagine that it’s the most entertaining thing they’ve seen all day.

We discuss the possibility of wading through the icy water to get around the brutes; in fact, it seems our best option, but it’s an ugly and uncomfortable one. Finally, Claire points to the rock wall furthest away from the waterline, and asks if we can possibly climb along it. I had looked at it before and dismissed it because it’s probably a 65-degree angle, but at this point it’s got grass on it and isn’t freezing cold, so it’s preferable to the hypothermic wading option. We struggle towards it and begin sidling along the wall, clutching the grass, trying desperately not to tumble on top of the furious seals waiting anxiously below us. Of course, I can’t resist a picture, just to document, you know.

Finally we gasp and claw our way to a platform just above the bull seal, who roars with impotent rage as we approach; evidently he can’t lift, undulate and flop to our height. The last challenge is to descend about 20 feet from him. This seems like enough space, but I pick up a rock anyway, as if I’m going to be able to defend myself against a lurching 250 pounds of fat with teeth and fins. Nervously, we touch down and move quickly to the shore, freaked and exhausted, but ultimately uninjured.

So take it from us: the next time you go to a zoo and here the “Arrt”-ing of a domesticated seal, just remember, these blobby piles of lard are not to be crossed.