…How I attended a seal wake…
I have always been a massive fan of wildlife, and being near seal pups was one of my lifelong dreams. It seemed so simple: hop on the bus from Victoria Coach Station to Norwich, spend the night in a cheap hotel room, have a full English breakfast at Wetherspoon’s, and then take the bus to Winterton-on-Sea. Soon, I would be walking the dunes of sand, looking for seals.
Sounds perfect, right? Despite the cold wind and the winter chill, a beach day is always what my soul craves and needs. So here I was, walking towards a dream of mine. Instagram had promised hundreds of sea pups sleeping on the beach – their white fur coats too delicate for the water, waiting for their mothers to return from the hunt.
“Hey, look!” I called my friend. “I see two of them over there!” We slowly approached the pair – about teenage pups, keeping a safe distance between them and us. It’s important to me to resist that selfish human urge to get as close as possible. We should know better by now: if you approach a pup too closely, there’s a good chance the mother won’t come back. And when that happens, the pup will die.
After a few photos from a distance – thanks to my phone’s zoom, no flash, because really, come on. We moved on, following the path along the beach. Soon enough, we saw that famous white fur coat again – but this time, it was covered in sand, eyes shut, lifeless. Then another. And another. Dozens of tiny white bodies were scattered across the shore. What was supposed to be a peaceful Sunday morning walk turned into a grim pattern of “Be careful, there’s another dead one here.”
It made me think about how social media has become one of the very tools destroying the lives of other creatures. We’ve turned into hunters with cell phones, always chasing the better shot, the prettier angle, the proof that we were there. All for a tiny digital square on a screen. And most people won’t even care about anyone else’s posts anyway too absorbed in their own endless scroll for validation.
With seal breeding season slowly approaching again, I just want to make one thing clear: it’s fine to be curious about wildlife, to peacefully observe them from a distance. It’s fine to take inspiration from Instagram for your trip as long as you leave the place exactly as you found it.
No, seals are not your toys.
And the beach is not yours to ruin.
