Mee Outdoors Photography

This is one of how great seals and sea lions are.

I’m sure fur seals and walruses are just as excellent, but I don’t know any yet. I’ll be all over it if I discover any in the British Isles.

These are images of Californian sea lions photographed at Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s purpose-built sea lion facility and wild, common seals photographed from the north Welsh coast.

There would be a selection of grey seals on the north Yorkshire coast… but that was before I learnt to operate the zoom lens properly. The only thing I can say about the photos is that they are, in fact, disastrous.

Anyway, on with the seals/lions.

They can work in perfect symmetry

Apparently, synchronised swimming is something sea lions engage in. I can believe this, as they’re incredibly chatty and boisterous when the mood takes them.

Perhaps this double stance is related?

Their features are cute and confusing

So it appears sea lions have visible ears, but seals don’t.

They also seem to have heart-shaped noses.

Sea lions also have rather unusual teeth. The uppers are a sort of blackish brown. This is usual, apparently, due to some kind of bacterial balance that serves the sea lion.

I’m glad about this, as I did worry that captivity had given them gum disease.

Flashing mermaid tails

Basking seals seem to rive around a lot. There’s plenty of singing and throwing one’s head back and forth, contorting the whole body like a kind of aqua slinky.

This is includes amble flexing of one’s fins and fanning out their wonderful tails…

Though the this might have been a reflex response to the squealing pup next to her. Like how many of us automatically draw back from a screaming child in the supermarket.

They have five fingers

While observing the grooming process (which appears to involve much nibbling of the front flippers), I noticed the nails on front and back fins.

There are five on each: utterly humanoid. I don’t know why this surprised me, but it did.

There’s no way of zooming in on this without sharing a fabulously pixelated photo, so I’ve amused myself with a seal and its cave instead.

I don’t care what anyone says, he is deliberately blowing bubbles because its’ fun.

They shall not be interfered with

With a limited number of rocks as the tide turned, there was competition for space.

Seals are agile in water, not on land. This was interesting to watch as they seemed to struggle onto the rocks with a lot of jiggling and heaving. Which makes sense, given their overall roundness and lack of feet.

Once one was situated on land – or at least half a rock during low tide – it was on and absolutely not moving.

Here, we have a pup being thoroughly molested by a hopeful trying to share the rock but being unable to get a foothold.

The adult eventfully gave up, which may have been due to the incessant howling of the little one.

We need to stand well back

Of the aforementioned disastrous collection of grey seals in North Yorks, this is the only photo I consider acceptable.

Here, I’m using a 70-300mm zoom lens. For the non-photographers, the zoom level is probably best described as size ‘medium’.

Even with that, the seals are small because I was standing at a thorough distance.

The other photos of wild common seals were generally taken at a closer range. This is because I was perhaps 70m above them on an isolated clifftop and because I didn’t expect to see them immediately below me!

This was a delightful surprise and meant I was close enough to watch them intimately.

They clearly noticed me, given the direct eye contact they made with the camera. I can confirm that no flash was used.

However, my presence didn’t seem to interfere with their grooming, basking or snoozing.

Here, I couldn’t get closer. I wanted to, certainly. But that would have been for me, not for them. This is a humbling fact and a lesson I shall remember.