Robin Lindsey assumed it was because the cement was warmer than the surrounding rocks. She visited the pup daily and was concerned because he had large puncture wounds on his body from another seal. He obviously needed to rest, but blocking off one side of the busy boat launch left boaters unhappy.

“That’s the whole deal, these guys need to rest,” Lindsey said. “They’re going to be in someone’s backyard.”

Lindsey is a first responder and the photographer for Seal Sitters, a nonprofit organization of volunteers founded in 2007 by Brenda Peterson. She and her team set out to protect a key piece of the Puget Sound ecosystem: the harbor seal.

Seal sitting
Concrete sea walls stretch almost to the water on Alki Beach, and the Seattle skyline rises from the horizon across the water. The urban environment that surrounds the West Seattle Sound is depleting part of the habitat harbor seals rely on.

Harbor seals “haul out,” or seek refuge on the shore, when they want to rest, regulate their body temperature and give birth, said Dr. Alejandro Acevedo-Gutiérrez, an associate professor of biology and science education at Western. Every fall, they also haul out to molt, shedding their fur to grow a new coat.

The Seal Sitters volunteer to observe pups that haul out, and educate people to avoid situations that could be harmful for the seals.

Peterson began the group because she found that people did not understand hauling out is a necessary and normal part of seal life, and thought the pups were hurt. A woman visiting from Californian saw a pup on a Seattle beach, took it back to her hotel and put it in her bathtub with fresh water and clams. The pup died.

Harbor seals are crucial to the ecosystem because they do not migrate, so their diets consist of fish from Puget Sound, making their health determined by the health of their prey. This makes them an indicator species: if the Puget Sounds is unhealthy, the fish will be unhealthy, making the seals unhealthy.

“They are literally a barometer for Puget Sound,” Lindsey said.

In Seattle, where docks and sea walls line a large part of the beach, pups have few places to haul out.

Anyone can call Seal Sitter’s dispatch line if they spot a seal on the beach and they will be connected to Larry Carpenter, Seal Sitter’s dispatcher, who will send a volunteer to the beach to watch over the seal.

Sometimes a pup on the shore is so severely polluted, Seal Sitters and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, known as NOAA, must transport them to a rehabilitation center, Peterson said.

The organization also distributes fliers to raise awareness about seal habitats.

Though it is difficult to get specific statistics about their results, Peterson and Lindsey said they believe the work they do is making a difference.

“I can tell you that we have fewer dead seals than ever before,” Peterson said, “and that’s something.”

Other than natural aquatic threats, seals face a growing human presence with development. The animals are innately shy, but people eagerly want to snap photos of the animals, which stresses them out, Peterson said.

“The shores are vital to their survival,” Peterson said. “So many of these shores are blocked off by concrete or boat docks or something we’ve constructed for our own use.”

The Bellingham seal scene
In Bellingham, urbanization has not yet taken a large toll on seal pups. But with a growing city population and a massive waterfront redevelopment plan soon going into affect, the life of a Whatcom area seal may get more difficult.

Some fishermen have little tolerance for seals because they steal fish from gillnets and sometimes become entangled in them. They are viewed as competitors for the resource, Acevedo said.

“[The seals] get all twirled up in [the net] and it’s a big issue getting them apart,” said Kevin Thornton, a crabber in Bellingham Bay. “You see a lot of fishermen being nasty towards seals. They usually beat them out of it or something.”

Mariann Carrasco, lead investigator for Whatcom Marine Mammal Stranding Network, said she finds the blubbery carcasses of harbor seals washed up on the shores around Bellingham — casualties of the war between fishermen and harbor seals.

Most recently, 10 washed up over Labor Day, she said.

Carrasco has spent the past five years investigating cases like those earlier this year. She said there are usually two or three cases a year in the area.

Seal corpses usually wash ashore in groups, Carrasco said. The shootings generally occur around the same time as the gillnet season. Carrasco believes the animals get into the nets and are shot by fishermen rather than using safer, legal techniques, such as pellet guns or loud noises, to scare the animals away.

By the time these cases are investigated, however, most of the animals have been dead for a week or more and are beginning to decompose, she said.

Additionally, it is difficult to discern who is guilty. The only way to find the guilty party is if there was a witness or if the fisherman brags about the incident, said Brian Gorman, spokesperson for NOAA.

Thornton said many fishermen do not look down on this behavior because the distaste for seals is widespread. However, most are not killing the animals.

“I think you’ll find it’s usually just one bad apple,” Currasco said about those who shoot seals.

This was not the case up until 1972, when the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed, which puts a 100-yard buffer around marine mammals and prohibits disturbing or harassing the animal. Seals were historically hunted for bounty because fishermen perceived them as competition, Acevedo said.

The seal population began to rise after 1972 and continued to rise until 2005, when they peaked at around 11,000 in the waters between the San Juan Islands and Similik Bay, Acevedo said.

He said they have since declined due to the environment’s inability to support the high population. In 2008, there were about 8,000 seals in those waters, consistent with the previous year.

“Right now the rationale is the population in this area has reached the carrying capacity for its environment,” Acevedo said.

In Bellingham, it is harder for humans to make contact with seals. There are more floating docks and rock outcroppings where seals can haul out, Acevedo said.

Additionally, Bellingham seals have the Georgia Pacific log pond, a mass of floating logs outside the Georgia Pacific site in the bay, where they often haul out.

However, in 2004 Acevedo and graduate student Amber Johnson observed kayakers and powerboats off Yellow Island in the San Juans to see how many boats crossed the 100-yard threshold. About 85 percent of kayakers they watched got too close, while about 57 percent of stopped powerboats and 4.6 percent of passing powerboats they observed violated the 100-yard buffer.

There is a big problem with enforcement of the buffer, Acevedo said. NOAA is in charge of implementation, and it is difficult to tell kayakers to circumvent a big area because of one seal.