It was mid-April, and the setting sun bathed the sea in soft pink shades. Alexis Maloux thought it the best time to hop on a boat with friends to experience the shores of the Baie de Somme, a large estuary in Northern France.

The captain turned off the motor engine, and in the silence, they could enjoy the view – a pebble beach, jagged cliffs,  and, in the low tides of the English Channel, seals. “Our guide knew where to take us to see many seals napping on the beach,” says Maloux, a 32-year-old Parisian who likes to get away from the capital to enjoy nature. “They seemed so happy, jumping in and out of the water. It was super cute.”

The Baie de Somme is home to France’s biggest colony of harbour seals. There are around 700 in summer, according to a 2021 census by the Réseau National Phoques (National Seal Network) – half of the overall population in France.

“They are a true showcase for the region that attracts many tourists,” says Emilien Desbiendras, who grew up in a village close to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, the biggest town in the region and a go-to spot for tourists. Only eight kilometres away is the Pointe du Hourdel, a popular seal-watching spot.

In the 20th century, seals in European waters were hunted for their skin and meat, and killed by fishermen, leaving them severely endangered. Since 2011, they have been safeguarded in France under the list of protected marine mammals. Today, thanks to national and European conservation efforts, seals are doing better than ever. But a sharp increase in tourism in the Baie de Somme could spell doom, threatening to put the protected animals in another state of emergency.

“Last year was the worst”

Le Hourdel is a small fishing port of 50 people, but it attracts two million seal watchers per year. “The tourist season is a catastrophe,” says Sarah Monnet, who is in charge of seal protection in Baie de Somme. She works at Picardie Nature, an association that collaborates with the Somme department to protect nature and educate locals and tourists.

Last August, a baby seal got stranded on the beach of Le Crotoy, another tourist town. The tides were low and the animal, having lost its mother, found itself on land. People surrounded the weeping pup. “That created a crowd; dozens of people circled one newborn,” remembers Monnet.

And while people were well-intentioned in wanting to help the baby find its mom, Monnet says that this behaviour can be fatal for newborn seals. “It’s very complicated for a female to find her young in the vastness of the bay. And if there are 200 people around, she has to make a choice – either get in danger or abandon the pup.”

Harbour seals give birth in July and August, during peak tourist season. Every summer, Picardie Nature helps dozens of abandoned newborns, still dependent on their mothers for nursing. If experts do not intervene, the pups usually die on the shore.

In 2023 in Baie de Somme, eight seal pups lost their lives and more than 20 were sent to treatment centres across France, far away from the bay. Numbers of dying and endangered seal pups are increasing each year, says Monnet.

“Last year was the worst. We recovered eight pups in the middle of summer,” says Sami Hassani, a specialist in marine mammals at Océanopolis, a treatment centre in Brest, close to another of France’s major seal colonies. “Usually, we recover between one and three. All were unweaned seals that had been disturbed or had lost their mothers.” Although centres like Océanopolis help seals fully recover, the animals then have to be reintroduced to nature, taught how to hunt and transported back to their colony, all of which causes additional stress.

Tourists see a seal on the beach and jump on it to save it. What a joke!

The tourist factor

The coronavirus pandemic transformed the Baie de Somme, says Francois Goudeau,  communications director at the Syndicat Mixte Baie de Somme, a public organisation for regional planning. Tourists flocked to the region post-lockdown to appreciate nature more. Additionally, the French are increasingly buying property on the north coast in order to escape climate change-induced temperature rises.

Another factor is proximity, with the region being just two and a half hours away from Paris. “Tourism is an important part of the economy,” says François Bergez, director of Somme Tourisme. In 2023 tourism brought approximately 511 million euros to the whole department, and employed 7,500 people, according to company data.

For Goudeau and Bergez, tourism and nature conservation can go hand in hand. They are working closely with the department and associations to push forward green initiatives, such as building bike lanes and maintaining natural parks. In March 2024, the Baie de Somme was voted the world’s third most sustainable destination at the Green Destinations Story Awards.

Frédérique Gilbert, founder of Cetasea, which protects marine mammals, agrees that most people come to the Somme with good intentions. But due to misinformation, their actions can have damaging consequences. In the peak summer season, seals are disturbed dozens of times per day. “In France, it’s a disaster,” sighs Gilbert. “Tourists see a seal on the beach and jump on it to save it. What a joke!” People think that once a seal is on the sand, it is stuck. But they need time to relax on shore before they go back to swimming. If seals get frightened, they can get into the water too early and die from fatigue, explains Gilbert.

People’s urge to help baby seals can be explained with the Kindchenschema, or “baby schema”, coined by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz. The theory says that humans inherently want to take care of “cute” creatures with baby-like features – big eyes, round faces and chubby cheeks.

A grey zone

Protecting harbour seals is a top priority elsewhere in Europe too. The Wadden Sea, an area that extends along the coast of Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, is home to the largest seal population in the EU. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Wadden Sea has seen its harbour seal population increase from below 5,000 in 1975 to around 33,300 today.

In 1991, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands signed the Agreement on the Conservation of Seals in the Wadden Sea, concluded under the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. Some of the requirements under the Seal Agreement were seal habitat protection, research, and raising public awareness of seal conservation, similar to what activists and associations are doing in Baie de Somme.

The UK is also home to a large harbour seal population. Following sharp population declines, the island was also the first European territory to put in place legislation to protect seals in general. The 1970 Conservation of Seals Act forbids almost completely the killing of the mammals.

Killing seals, however, remains a grey zone in many countries, even though the pinnipeds remain largely protected. In Scotland, for example, seals could be killed under licence if they disturb, damage, or injure fish farms or commercial fish. The country also allows the killing of seals if they endanger Atlantic salmon, which are protected under the European Union Habitats Directive. In Norway, Greenland, and Russia, killing seals for their skin and meat is still authorised.

Within the EU, seal products can only be imported if an Indigenous or Inuit community has carried out the hunt and if the hunt hasn’t been carried out for commercial profit. Googling “seal fur”, however, shows that buying one is not that hard. The Danish website Levinsky, for example, claims that they sell “sustainable” and “eco-friendly” fur, and that “All seal skins bought by LEVINSKY is [sic] caught by Greenlandic Inuit hunters alongside the Greenlandic coast.”

Even though the revised EU directive – enacted in 2009 with a general ban on seal products in the EU market – has many loopholes, this summer the European Commission launched a “fitness check” of the EU seal regime, aiming to assess if it remains fit for purpose. The results are yet to be made public.

However, the assessment triggered some 14,000 feedback comments on the website of the Commission, many of which expressed concern that softening the directive might lead to an increase in inhumane seal killings.

Killing seals remains a grey zone in many countries even though the pinnipeds remain largely protected.

Market forces

The 1983 Seal Pups Directive had brought to an end imports to Europe of the skins of seal pups under a year old. Europe had once been the largest market for seal products, but in the 1970s, growing awareness of the cruelty involved in commercial sealing led to increasing pressure to ban seal products, and the directive followed.

Seal killing decreased drastically for almost a decade until the early 1990s when the collapse of the Northwest Atlantic cod fishery led Canadian officials to blame seals for harming fish stocks. In response, Canada introduced subsidies and high kill quotas, shifting the focus to slightly “older” seals that were not protected by the European ban.

With annual kill quotas of more than 350,000 seals, Canada’s seal hunt became the world’s largest marine mammal slaughter, and the products from the industry once again targeted the European market. This brought activists back almost to square one.

Canada’s case shows why the Commission’s “fitness check” of the 2009 directive is attracting so much controversy. In the context of the check, some fishing industry voices have tried to reopen the discussion on an alleged trade-off between fisheries and seal protection, but most experts agree the argument is groundless and outdated.

Seal of approval for advertising

In France, discussions revolve around tourism – less bloody, but still a growing threat to seals. Activists wish to de-commercialise the seal image, but in the shops of Baie de Somme, plush seal keychains, cookie boxes with pup faces, and beach towels showing images of the grey animals suggest things are moving in the opposite direction.

Removing the seal image is one of the goals of Francois Goudeau. He also wishes to promote other regional activities like rare bird watching. The aim is to divert tourists from oversaturated sights and diversify income. In the meantime, local rules to protect seals have been strengthened. People are prohibited from getting closer than 300 metres; bothering seals can lead to a 750 euro fine.

During his boat ride, Alexis Maloux and his friends remained at a distance from the seals. They observed them with binoculars, and the guide, who had undergone training in seal conservation and protection, explained why getting too close could harm the seals. “But often people in kayaks, as they’re not actually with a guide, play at getting as close as possible to the seals, and that can be very disturbing,” says Maloux.

From this autumn onwards, the department will do mandatory training for guides in the bay, ensuring that everyone sticks to the rules, says Monnet.

To blame or not to blame

Tourism shouldn’t be seen as the only factor impacting the seals, says François Bergez, the director of Somme Tourisme. Although he understands its impact, for him we “should not demonise tourism either. We need to make it more virtuous.” However, the industry is harming protected animals all around the world. The Hawaiian monk seal is at a high risk of extinction after the post-pandemic boom in tourism, while the rising numbers of tourists to Antarctica are endangering marine animals even there.

But for now, all actors in Baie de Somme – associations, the tourism industry and locals – seem to be on the same page: they want to make cohabitation work by not letting tourism turn into overtourism. “Striking a balance should not be that difficult to find,” says Emilien Desbiendras, the Baie de Somme local. “Tourism is now part of the equation.”