A young hooded seal was been spotted on the beach in Ostend last week. It’s a species of seal that mainly lives in the Arctic. It is only the fifth time that a hooded seal has been spotted on the Flemish coast. ‘It’s an ambassador for its habitat, coming to tell us that things are not going so well there,’ says Jan Haelters of the Institute of Natural Sciences. On Thursday evening, a walker on the beach near the eastern breakwater of the port channel in Ostend took a photo of what he thought was a grey seal. The next day, he posted the photos on social media. It soon became clear that it was not a grey seal, but a hooded seal.
This is a species of seal that does not occur in the North Sea, but actually lives in the Arctic. ‘It is highly unusual for a hooded seal to be seen on the beach on our coast,’ says Jan Haelters of the Institute of Natural Sciences.
‘The hooded seal mainly lives around Greenland and in northern Canada. The southernmost habitat where the hooded seal occurs is Iceland, which is already exceptional,’ Haelters explains. ‘So the animal was very far from home.’
This is only the fifth sighting of a hooded seal in our climes. ‘The last sighting dates back to 2003, before that the hooded seal was seen in 1987 and 1999, and in 2000 a male and a female were spotted. Only one of them survived in the end’.
A consequence of climate change?
According to Haelters, it cannot be proved that the animal fled because its habitat is under pressure from climate change. ‘But we cannot prove the opposite either,’ he says.
‘Nevertheless, together with the narwhal that washed ashore and the Greenland whale that was spotted in 2017, we can see it as ambassadors of the Far North coming to tell us that their habitat is under threat. Although we don't need these rare sightings to realise that the climate and the Arctic are in a bad way.’
The animal seen in Ostend looked healthy, but hasn't been sighted since despite the best efforts of nature watchers.