Let’s get one thing straight right away: seals are adorable. Even scientists agree. “Pretty much anything they do is cute,” admits Leanna Matthews, a seal biologist at the University of Syracuse.

North America’s seals are rebounding exponentially, as detailed in Alix Morris’s newly released book, A Year with the Seals. The tale highlights 61,000 harbor seals on the east coast and 400,000 grey ...