Sunday Rerun (from 2019): Seal Later

Bogoslof Island is about a third the size of Central Park in New York City. Sitting out there in the Bering Sea, it doesn't seem like a great place to give birth and raise young ones, because not only is it remote, there is an undersea volcano right below that for two years has been spewing steam and mud and sulfuric gas.

And from Alaska (this will sound like a show on the Nature Channel) Here Come The Seals!

Northern fur seal mothers go to the rocky beaches of Bogoslof to have their babies and raise them!



“The population growth of northern fur seals on Bogoslof has been extraordinary,” said Tom Gelatt, head man for a NOAA Fisheries group that studies fur seals.

The thing is, there are plenty of uninhabited Aleutian Islands to choose from, and there is no evidence of a Bogoslof Tourism Bureau luring seals to their specific island with promises of plenty of fish, free evening whale-watching cruises, and inexpensive T-shirts ("My Mom went to Bogoslof to have another baby and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!")

Seals hang in the ocean from November to June and then head for land to breed and nurse in summertime.


One reason for the popularity of Bogoslof might be the natural birthing chairs - rock slabs as long as 33 feet that blew out of the underground in the volcanic activity. Chris Waythomas, a U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist at Alaska's Volcano Observatory says, “They litter the surface. It’s pretty wild.”

Another tourist attraction, if you like such things, would be the Fumaroles.  No, not that new couple that just moved in from Cleveland. A fumarole is a gas-blowing, mud-tossing geyser that makes a sound like a jet engine as it hurls the earth into the sky. “It was amazing, the sounds that were being produced,” Waythomas says.

It might be that the seals find the chow appealing on Bogoslof. Seals there eat squid and northern smoothtongue, a deep-water fish that looks like a smelt.

I can't tell you how many times in my life I have mistaken a smoothtongue for a smelt.

Probably 8 or 9.

And you know what else stumps the researchers? Seals started going to Bogoslof in 1980, long before the volcano blew its top.

From this we can only conclude that seals are able to predict the future. They have already picked World Series, Super Bowl, and Preakness winners for this season and next.