Under the Maples by John Burroughs

There is a bit of live natural history out here in the sea in front of me that is new and interesting. A bunch of about a dozen hair seals have their rendezvous in the unstable waves just beyond the breakers, and keep together there week after week. To the naked eye they seem like a group of children sitting there on a hidden bench of rock, undisturbed by the waves that sweep over them. Their heads and shoulders seem to show above the water, and they appear to be having a happy time.

Now and then one may be seen swimming about or lifted up in a wall of green-blue transparent water, or leaping above the wrinkled surface in the exuberance of its animal spirits. I call them children of the sea, until I hear their loud barking, and then I think of them as dogs or hounds of the sea. Occasionally I hear their barking by night when it has a half-muffled, smothered sound.