I finally saw a Saimaa seal!

The Saimaa ringed seal (Pusa hispida saimensis), an endangered pinniped endemic to eastern Finland, changes its fur every year. For that, it needs to spend a lot of time outside the water, to dry and shed its fur. This happens after babies are weaned. Thus, May is the best period to find a seal basking on a rock.
This is of course of great interest for the scientists and conservationists who study the seals. They scour the lake, in its multitude of channels and islands, and take careful note of all the seals they spot. Importantly, they take pictures of the seals and add them to their database. That's because each seal sports a unique fur pattern, made of pale rings on a dark canvas, and it can be identified thanks to it.

​Animal identification based on individual patterns has been the subject of research in the past, with software created to recognize zebras, giraffes or whale sharks, among others. I talked with Ekaterina Nepovinnykh, the researcher from Lappeenranta University of Technology who developed the algorithm used on Saimaa ringed seals. She told me that seals are more challenging than other animals, mainly because they are so deformable. In essence, they are big blobs of blubber that like to lounge in all sorts of positions, sometime on their belly, sometimes on the side or the back, flexing this part of their body or relaxing that one... which means the algorithm has a lot of trouble making sense of what it's looking at. In contrast, a zebra's shape is more or less always the same! Starting from existing programs, Ekaterina had to make changes to accommodate the malleable nature of seals. One important step is to isolate the seal's shape from its surroundings. Later, the patterns are cut into small patches that are stored in a numerical representation of the seal's fur.

​This identification process still requires some human input. Conservationists from Metsähallitus, the Finnish government agency for conservation and forestry, start by inputing the point of view from which the seal is viewed, as it's difficult for the algorithm to determine that. At the end, the program proposes up to 5 possible matches from the database, and the user decides which one is correct, if any.
Year after year, this growing database of seal images paints the picture of a population that is threatened but growing, thanks to conservation efforts. We get to know more about the seals' habits and territories, and thus know better how to protect them.

​My first seal sighting was from a canoe I had rented in Savonlinna. I spent a bit of time on the water there, hoping to catch a sight of one. Spring was in the air, with lots of birds active everywhere: gulls, divers, grebes, it was fantastic. Overhead, Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis) migrated in wide V-shape formations, on the way to their Arctic nesting grounds.
​I spotted a dark bird in the distance, but I couldn't recognize it. It got closer, but dived before I could identify it... and spent a really long time underwater, more than any bird I knew. When it finally showed up again, I realized my "bird" was in fact the snout of a seal, my first one! I observed it for almost an hour: there wasn't much to see, really, just a small black bump far in the distance, but I was elated nonetheless. I soaked in the moment, enjoying the beauty of Lake Saimaa. Rowing back to the harbour, I heard Black grouses (Lyrurus tetrix) in display.

There be a seal there!

I even saw the Northern Lights from my canoe!

The vivid colours of brand-new birch foliage

​A few days later, I boarded Jari Ilmonen's boat south of Savonlinna. Jari is the coordinator of the Saimaa ringed seal conservation project at Metsähallitus, he'd helped me connect with a few people for my reportage. Now it was time to go spot some seals. We travelled fast between the islands, on the lookout for seals sleeping on the rocks. When we spotted one, Jari would slow the boat down to a crawl, and we would pass by, taking pictures without really stopping. The idea is to mimic a normal boat that might be passing by, so as not to alarm the seal too much, because it might prompt it to dive into the water. Seals are sensitive to disturbance, it's primordial to give them space and leave them in peace.

Naturally, it's difficult to take pictures with a long lens while moving, especially since the seals were rather far away. Add to it the haze coming from the sun-warmed lake, and you get pictures that are not necessarily very sharp... but I'll take what I got, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to join such an outing (3 in total, over a few days).

One time, it was possible to set foot on an island to photograph a seal. We landed on the opposite side and slowly, carefully made our way towards the seal. The wind was blowing into our face, so it couldn't smell us. From the shore, we had some time to observe that lazy wonder of nature as it scratched, reclined, scratched some more, observed its surroundings... the hard seal life, basically!

This project was partially funded by a grant from FINNFOTO.