124 NATGEOTRAVEL.COM
Snow days: In a herd of harp seals (above), the ultra-white
newborns are hard to see; a woman and a harp seal pup called
a whitecoat (top left) observe each other on the ice. Visitors
can get close to the seals but not touch them. Allow for a
comfortable distance that provides animals an opportunity for
an encounter on their own terms.As I scan the icescape, I see larger, more active pups in their
whitecoat phase. These older pups, born days earlier, have the
distinct advantage of time in the increasingly unpredictable
world of climate change and its impact on the ice beneath them.
Late-born pups especially need an adequate period of stable
ice to survive in a world where spring comes earlier every year
and, with it, increasingly strong storms that demolish the ice
pack like a blender. A life born to ice is difficult, and natural
mortality is high; add a season of increased temperatures and
decreasing ice and you have a deadly combination for the pups.
THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS, or the Maggies, as some Canadians
affectionately call them, are an archipelago of islets that resemble
ships at anchor in the center of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In 2011
a National Geographic assignment first took photographer (and
my partner) David Doubilet and me to the Maggies, for a story
about the Gulf of St. Lawrence’s marine ecosystem.
The boat we boarded to meet the seals was a steel-hulled
fishing—and seal-hunting—vessel. Magdalen Islanders have
fished and hunted seal off these shores since the 1600s. It’s a
controversial tradition that continues today with strict quotas
and regulations (no whitecoats)—despite a substantial decline
in the number of seals harvested due to decreasing market price
and unfavorable ice conditions. “Given the current market sit-
uation for hunting products,” our guide, Mario Cyr, told me,
“ecotourism and observation tours are the best alternative for
most boat owners and hunters.”
After two days of searching open water, the boat’s captain
nosed the vessel into a patch of sea ice supporting a herd of more
than 10,000 seals. We drifted there with the ice over several days
and nights. It was extraordinary to pull on crampons and walk
among this gathering of pulsating life on the ice and then to put
on a dry suit, mask, fins, and snorkel and slide into their world
with a camera. Life at the edge of the patch can be a busy place,
with mothers coming and going beneath a dark-blue cathedral
of ice pierced by shafts of light, apprehensive whitecoats peering