Photo courtesy of the NYC Mayor's Office
There have been plenty of seals spotted around the city in recent years—at Gracie Mansion, in Inwood, on Brighton Beach, even on the Upper West Side. If you haven't had the luck of spotting one in person, however, the American Princess cruise boat is here to help you make your own luck, whisking you away to seal hot spots.
Seal watching season has officially begun—tours started on February 4th and will run through April 15th. Tour guide Paul Sieswerdatold explained to the the NY Post, “There is a growing population of harbor seals in the East Coast," and one group even counted 43 seals in a single two-hour trip. Some have even had bonus sightings of falcons, egrets, herons, whales and dolphins (but typically you'll see those after seal season). Some people have been posting the sightings on the boat's Facebook page. Sieswerdatold is the former curator for the New York and New England aquariums, and at the latter even cared for Andre, who the 1994 children’s film Andre was based off. He even raised an abandoned baby seal at his home on Staten Island until finding a permanent aquarium home for it.
The tours run Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 2:30 p.m. and cost $27 for adults, $15 for kids. You meet at Riis Landing in Rockaway, and once aboard will go through the lower New York Bay, south of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Bonus: there's a coffee bar and a real bar on the boat, for when you're making the slow journey out to seal territory.
And if you don't have your sea legs, you can always go pay a visit to Nicky, the Brooklyn-born seal living in the Central Park Zoo.
