Check Out Video Of 150 Seals Relaxing At Sandy Hook

SANDY HOOK GATEWAY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, NJ — Check out this video a local Bayshore resident shot of seals hauling out of the water to relax last Friday at Sandy Hook.

Kim Halligan Garrison shot this video last Friday, March 23, and shared it the Birding in Central New Jersey Facebook page. She estimates there were about 150 seals that hauled out onto a sand bar at Sandy Hook at about 9 a.m. Friday.

The best way to see the Sandy Hook seals is to park at Lot C and then cross over to the bayside of the park. "Turn right to walk up beach about a quarter of a mile," Garrison said on Facebook."You can see them with binoculars as soon as you are on the beach."

You can only see the Sandy Hook seals at low tide, as when the tide comes in their low tide island is under water.

There are hundreds of harbor seals that call the Sandy Hook peninsula home, because it is relatively isolated from people and they can hunt fish in Raritan Bay. In fact, seals sunning themselves on the sandbars off Sandy Hook is a familiar wintertime sight to anyone who knows the area. Skeleton Hill Island, which is really not much bigger than a sandbar, in particular is a favorite winter haul-out spot.

"They've been at Sandy Hook for years. But we don't want people getting up close and personal. The seals are there because people can't get to them. They want to rest. Once people start taking kayaks out to see them, they will move," said Bob Schoelkopf, founder and director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, which rescues marine mammals up and down the New Jersey coast.

Top: User-submitted photo to Patch of a seal on the Jersey Shore in the summer of 2017. Videos taken by Kim Halligan Garrison