Saimaa Ringed Seal 09/2024
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The idea to go boating on a large Finnish lake appeared to us even before we heard about the peculiar freshwater seal population that lives in the area, but once we learned more about the Saimaa Ringed Seal, lake Saimaa became the clear destination.
Lake Saimaa is really confusing on the map – I first thought that the name referred just to the large body of open water north of Lappeenrantra and only after seeing where the seal observations on iNaturalist were, I found out that all the channels and all the different, seemingly separate lakes, all the way up to Varkaus, were actually at the same level and formed one insanely huge lake. After our experience from Pantanal, we decided that a slightly larger boat was needed for three people and so we borrowed a Gumotex Scout inflatable canoe from a friend. When packed with seats and sleeping bags for better protection in transport, the bag had 30 kilos and Finnair happily transported it from Prague to Helsinki as a checked bag for a small surcharge. The lake is easily reached by public transportation, but in just a few places that are several days of paddling from each other.
We started in Varkaus and after 5 days ended in Enonkoski – this route took us through the Linnansaari National Park, which even has the seal in the logo and is a well-known seal hotspot. The entire journey was through beautiful nature – outside of the park there were often cabins on the shores, but their nordic style is cute and well in line with the landscape. The park prohibits wild camping but offers many free official campsites; outside of the park, camping is generally allowed as long as you aren’t too close to a cabin, and we always found a nice spot. There are basically no places to resupply (even the café on the main island was already closed for the season in the second week of September), so you need to carry all food – on the other hand, you have about 40 kubic kilometers of drinking water always within a hand’s reach! We were a little surprised by the strong winds, which caused significant waves in the more open parts of the lake. Even when you plan to follow the islands, you need to occasionally cross about a kilometer of open water and that has proven problematic during the highest winds and we had to adjust the path to account for that. During our stay (September 7-15) , the season quite rapidly evolved from late summer to fall in colors; it was nicely warm around 20 degrees, but the forecast was clear that this was the last such week of the year.
During the 5 days, we have seen exactly one seal. It came within a dozen meters of the shore after we already stopped for the day, watched us for a while (showing just the head) and left. Interestingly the place (62.1419, 28.3387) was just outside of the national park borders and it wasn’t even on an island, so technically the boat wasn’t necessary for the sighting, but if I should guess, that was purely accidental. We tried night walks in two places, but only found a Bank Vole and unidentified bats flying; we saw Moose scat on islands (and some other boaters saw a Moose swimming across the lake) and Beaver homes and chew marks.
For the last two days, we rented a car in Helsinki and after seeing the terrible forecast for the rest of Finland, we drove to the SE corner and tried to search for flying squirrels in some areas where GBIF had a bunch of records, but we found just Brown Hare, Red Squirrel and Eurasian Harvest Mouse; on the way to Varkaus on the first day, we saw a Moose from the bus. As expected for September, there were not many birds, but seeing a Black Grouse call from a stone in the middle of a lake channel was a sure highlight; Arctic Loons were common on the lake and Hazel Grouse called on the islands and could be found at night with IR.
Post Views: 258
Post Views: 258
JanEbr
I forgot to add the most peculiar piece of information to the post: Eliška (who goes to these trips with me and my wife) has now seen exactly one cetacean and one pinniped in her life – *both* in fresh water. She literally has no reason to think that these groups of animals live mostly in the sea!