Seal Pool - Okhotsk Tokkari Center, Hokkaido, Japan

Welcome to the seal pool at the Okhotsk Tokkari Center in Mombetsu, on the far northern coast of Hokkaido, Japan. This live camera looks down on the main pool, where you will usually find a few seals sprawled out on the concrete ledge in the sun and others cruising slow laps around the water behind them. The centre is known in Japanese as オホーツクとっかりセンター, and the word tokkari comes from the Ainu tukar, meaning seal.

Two species share this pool. Spotted seals turn up along this coast every year around the time the drift ice arrives from the north, and ringed seals are the smallest seals in the world, born in snow caves out on the sea ice. Most of the day is quiet, with plenty of dozing, and then a burst of noise and movement whenever food appears. Japan is nine hours ahead of UTC, so the busiest hours fall during the European and American night. If you find the pool empty, nothing is wrong: the seals are moved next door at cleaning time, and the camera changes its framing through the day.

This is the only place in Japan that cares for seals and nothing else. It opened in 1987 and moved to its present site beside the marine park in 1999. As well as the seals who live here permanently, it takes in animals found injured or tangled in fishing nets along the Okhotsk coast, treats them, and returns the ones that recover to the sea. It is run by the city of Mombetsu and funded in part by public donations.

Did You Know? Recovered seals are released from the deck of the Garinko-go, the icebreaker that carries tourists out through the drift ice off Mombetsu. The same ship that takes visitors to see the frozen sea carries the rehabilitated seals back out to it.

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