The first time I came across the word “nerpa,” I was reading Peter Thomson’s Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal (1) in preparation for our Siberian adventure. I learned that nerpas, one of many species endemic to Lake Baikal, are some of the world’s smallest seals, clocking in at less than a meter and a half long. If you’ve ever scrolled through my Instagram feed, you will know that I am a fan of anything “mini”: mini-pugs, dwarf hamsters, micro-extreme mini teacup piglets, etc., and thus I was immediately obsessed with the nerpa, a “mini” version of a seal. (I highly recommend googling “baby nerpa seal.” You will discover happy, fluffy, white little fuzz balls, with enormous black eyes staring endearingly back at you.) The 7-year-old part of me that says “eeeeeeee!!” when I see a cute animal now had one goal for my upcoming Baikal trip: see a nerpa in the wild. However, the rational, boring, 20-year-old part of me knew that nerpas are wild animals who do not want to see me as much as I want to see them, and furthermore, that last year’s Carleton group hadn’t seen a nerpa outside of a museum. I braced myself for certain disappointment on the wild nerpa front.

We didn’t actually see Baikal until several days after we arrived in Siberia. As soon as the shimmering blue surface of the lake came into view during the van-ride to Ust-Barguzin, I donned my glasses and glued my eyes to the window, looking for the little bead of a seal’s head breaching for air. We stopped several times along the way, but there was no nerpa to be found. Two days passed, and I began to lose hope.

Finally, on our last full day in Ust-Barguzin, we had a picnic planned in the Trans-Baikal National Park. We pulled over to take in the view of the “holy nose” peninsula, and suddenly the cry went out: “Nerpas!” A long white streak interrupted the deep blue water in the distance: ice left over from the long Siberian winter, not yet melted in the 4°C water. Scattered across the ice were hundreds of little dark smudges. With the help of Nick’s binoculars, it became apparent that the smudges were actually moving around, flopping along on the ice, and basking in the sun. Even better, some of the smudges were teeny tiny, this year’s babies who had just lost their fluffy coats! A few hours later, we returned to the same beach, to find that this ice flow had floated much closer to the shore, and now it was possible to make out tails and flippers. We had stumbled across more than a thousand wild nerpas on some of the very last ice of the year.

(video: Ian Bell)

Nerpa-mania only increased among the group members after our miraculous nerpa sighting. We thought ourselves to be veritable nerpa experts after spying on the wild nerpas at a distance, reading about their place in the ecosystem, and hearing about their life cycle from our guides. They are indeed special creatures! In addition to their diminutive size, they hold the distinction of being the world’s only freshwater species of pinniped, having somehow appeared in Baikal 3000 river kilometers from the nearest ocean. According to our guide, they can live for over half a century, owing this long life span to their diet of “pure vitamin A,” aka the oily golomyanka fish.

However, as we entered the aquarium section of the Baikal museum in Listvyanka, none of this knowledge could have prepared us for the experience of seeing two up close in person. There, right before our eyes, were the two fattest little creatures I had ever seen. They swam gracefully and quickly back and forth in their two-room tank (which was a little bit small, making me kind of sad). In profile, these healthy (not-overweight) nerpas were like watermelons with tails. We all stood there open-mouthed, staring entranced at how round, adorable, and hilarious they were.

We returned to the tank five minutes before their scheduled feeding time to find that they were patiently waiting in the corner for their lunch of golomyanka in an orderly row, like students waiting in the buffet line in the cafeterias of Moscow State University. We fell head over heels for them as they hungrily gobbled up the fish that magically appeared in the water above them. (Video of nerpa feeding, slow motion fish snatch) As we left the museum, I was sad to leave behind our two newest friends from Baikal, the last of many (human and animal) we met in our almost two weeks there. Seeing nerpas on this Baikal expedition was a special, unexpected, and exciting part of my experience, the icing on the cake of all the natural wonders we were lucky to enjoy at the Sacred Sea. 

(1) Thomson, Peter. Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal (2007). New York: Oxford University Press.