Can silkies help the seals?

Common seal populations around the Orkney and Shetland Islands are shrinking and the cause is not as yet understood. Could it be the result of overcrowded breeding grounds such as two silkies saw many years ago?

The island when at last they reached it lay like a fat woman at low water, hip and shoulders rising roundly from the waves, the waist a low valley between the two. The exhaustion of journey’s end almost overwhelmed Giersi, but Hancid swam on, circling to the eastern beach. Here, as they approached, the damp breeze reached them across the island and the smell of the seals was pressed into nose and mouth, eyes and face.
‘Fagh! Oh Hancid, what is it? Why does it smell so bad?’
‘You’ll see,’ he replied grimly. ‘Come.’
Only stark necessity had forced him to bring her to this place, he hated what he was doing but knew that she had to learn to leave her beloved seals. She must no longer live with them in the gheos but return and live more like a woman of the folk.
They stepped awkwardly up the beach, finding their way between the cows who lay there with their pups. Frequently they were met by an angry hiss as the seals reared up at their approach.
‘Be careful not to go too close,’ murmured Giersi, ‘They like a whole body space clear around them.’
‘Then they haven’t enough room here,’ snapped Hancid stumbling wretchedly as his awkward feet slipped in un-nameable slime and he stubbed himself painfully against stones.
Suddenly a huge bull rose up in front of them, blocking their way. The white hair of his head showed him to be a senior, used to long years of dominating the cows and younger bulls of his beach. With a snarl he loped towards them, bouncing and crashing down the beach.
‘No, no. Be careful!’ screamed Giersi, and lunged towards the rocks at the side of the beach. Hancid stumbled and fled toward the sea where the master bull halted, searching for him with bleary, coated eyes. The beach was now a scene of panic with many cows humping toward the water or striking out with agitated flippers at the press of neighbours too close to their young. Two little pups, white coated, lay crushed in their own blood, where the rush of adults had trampled them.
Looking numbly out to sea, Giersi made out Hancid working his way round to the rocks where she crouched, sobbing at the horror of what she had seen. But he was not finished yet. Cautiously he led her up into the grassland behind the beach. Here, though less crowded, the scene was the same. Cows reared up aggressively as they approached, even snarling and snapping at them. On their guard now for the big bulls the silkies were able to avoid surprising them as they slept and they kept to the higher ground, away from the muddy stream where younger bulls wallowed and eyed the cows. On all sides Hancid pointed to abandoned pups; some were long dead and black flies hung in a visible stench above them. Others, abandoned at birth, lay like helpless infants in soiled and wrinkled bags of fur, too weak to lift their heads, their eyes dulled by dirt and disease. Too many small bodies lay crushed and broken under the awesome weight of adults.
Giersi could walk no further but fell to her knees in the mud and slime of the beaten grass.
‘Why have you brought me here? What do you want to prove?’ she cried. ‘This is not their true life; they are forced to live like this. There is something evil here, Hancid. No creature chooses to be degraded into this. The island is too full. Can they not move to other, cleaner beaches? Hancid, what does this mean?’
‘There are no other beaches, Giersi. Have you never wondered why the folk live as they do, on one sparse rock, when there are oceans all round the world where they might go? There are no more beaches for the people of the sea, the landsmen want them all. And so your precious seals live here for only a short part of the year, angry, aggressive and vicious. Soon they will leave it all and go out into the waters unloving and alone until it all is forced upon them again next year. Stay with the folk, Giersi. They will never abandon you like this poor creature.’ With his foot Hancid stirred the mute body of a day-old pup huddled against a tuft of rank grass for shelter.
The pup’s fur lay in empty rolls along its narrow body, the soft white hair rumpled and damp. At the nudge of Hancid’s foot however it rolled on its side and brushed an agitated flipper at him.
‘This one has some courage left to fight against his fate,’ Giersi smiled through her ready tears. ‘Hancid, let us interfere. He has the right to life, or death with dignity. Let us take him to the gheos and give him a new chance.’
‘He will die, Giersi, he needs to be fed. Without his mother’s milk he will die in a few days. Leave the seals, Giersi, come back to the folk.’
‘You are so sure you are right. Can’t you see that I am right in this? Help me Hancid, we must bring him away, that is the only way that I can forgive you for having brought me to this evil place. Only by saving just one can I bear to think of all the rest. Without this one alive I think I must come here to kill them all, to save them from this disgusting lie, which is never life.’
Alarmed at her violence Hancid began to help her away, afraid at last of what he had begun. Slipping in the disgusting mud they staggered on, then Giersi looked back.
On the slope behind them the little pup, weeping piteously, was slithering along to follow them.
‘Borhaab!’ he cried. ‘Borhaab.’
And she knew that she would take him away. Borhaab would be his name.

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