Can I get a seal of approval on these things or what?

This is more of a post for my own sanity, not for a legible blog posting. We're heading back to my November 2010 trip to Netitishi Point, James Bay to look at Seals...

It turns out, seal identification is unbelievably confusing. It makes me want to study Empidonax Flycatchers for a living...

Ok maybe that's a bit much, but I've finally had the chance to go through all of my seal photos, and pulled out a collection of pictures to really nail down the ID (the first set were just random, not chosen properly for field marks etc)

Without further delay, on a seal by seal basis, I give you the collections:

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SEAL NUMBER ONE:

This was a small youngster that allowed for some great photos.. ALL of the next photos are of the SAME individual:

All of those photos are posted here in order, as I took them. Note how the fur dries out and changes colour! 

I should also note, that the next several seals (until I say otherwise) were all taken on the same day!

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SEAL NUMBER TWO:

The day these photos were taken was VERY Nice for november. Warm, and virtually no wind. We saw LOTS of seals this day, whereas we only saw 1 or 2 a day on every other day of our visit, and not often up on rocks. 

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Seal #3

One of the larger, (or largest) seals I got photos of this day. The larger animals seemed to drop into the water earlier, when it was still too deep for me to get closer for photos. 

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Seal #4 

Taken the same day! This was the ONE seal that just about everyone agreed was a RINGED SEAL... As I pulled out more and more photos (for this blog post), I started to think that all of the seals I photographed this day were maybe this species, but I'll re-send this stuff to the experts one last time! (and update) 

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SEAL TEAM 5 

(I almost added an extra Seal to make it Seal team 6, but never mind)

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Ok, so that's all the photos taken on that fateful day. Interestingly, I took photos of this ONE seal the day before, and was really happy to get it. I made the ID of Bearded Seal at the time, and was wrong.. But I do (kinda) think it's a different species than all of the above animals (which would leave Harbour Seal? Which wasn't a "regular" species on the Ontario checklist before our visit)... But I just don't know... 

So there you have it.. I'll figure out some sort of way of updating if anything new happens. I'm going to try and get the photos to the people who commented on the limited first set!

I'll update new info here, if anything happens!