The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: February thirteenth, kissed with a seal.

Cute, cuddly, with black, innocent eyes, what could be more fitting as a Valentine's Day present than a kiss from a furry white seal? How about 100,000 seals?

The Magdalene Islands are a remote Canadian archipelago some 400 miles northeast of Boston. In winter, the shallow waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence cool enough to let sea ice form this far south. Each year about this time, the ice pack off the Magdalenes becomes a nursery for whitecoat harp seals. For several decades, the media reported on the annual horror: seal hunters clubbing new pups to death by the thousands. A campaign was started to end the slaughter, and 12 years ago, Canada suspended commercial hunting of the baby seals.

Now, and in part to offset the financial losses to the area, local tour operators offer helicopter shuttles 40 miles out on the icepack to see the spectacle of the seals. They land small groups near whelping patches. With a minimum of disruption to the seals, visitors can get close enough to hug a pup, a practice biologists call inconsequential to the animals, though often transformational for the humans. Witnessing the birth of a baby seal, their soon-to-be white coats still tinted yellow from amniotic fluid, is certainly a rare and moving moment.

And as the money winter travelers spend encourages the locals to conserve, not hunt, the seals, this qualifies as ecotourism at its best, a once in a life-time opportunity that might help to insure that harp seals will be here for many life times to come.

FMI Contact Atlantic Marine Wildlife Tours at 506-549-7325 LOVE

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