Harbor Seal or Harp Seal?

Hmmm, well we may have a mammal misidentification in the blog. The seal that I blogged about on Saturday night and said was a harbor seal, may be a harp seal (lifer mammal for me). In the past when I have been at this festival, we have seen a harbor seal swimming in the Connecticut river--one year it was very close and had a fish that a bald eagle kept trying to swoop down and steal from it.

This year we watched a seal on a very distant log across the river. It was entertaining to watch it roll around and slide onto the log and slide off. We kept noticing when it rolled that we could see white and that it seemed to have a dainty nose.

Turns out that a harp seal was spotted about ten miles up river from the festival at the East Haddam Bridge. Could this be the same harp seal?

Any seal experts who can discern harp from harbor with our distant photos?

Oh, and an FYI to readers who want to do a google image search: harp seals are the ones who get clubbed, so if you are squeamish, search carefully.