River Dart seals announce they’re in a polycule

A trio of seals living near Totnes have confirmed they are in a throuple.

The seals, who made their ménage à trois official with a flipper-tying ceremony upriver from the Steam Packet, have asked the public to “respect our evolving dynamic and avoid imposing narrow-minded hominid expectations onto our romantically fluid situation.” The trio is believed to have entered the arrangement earlier this week, although local observers suggest “it’s been bubbling away for months”.

“The heart wants what it wants,” squawked Mike Channing, a local herring gull, before making off with a luckless tourist’s pasty.  Marine biologist Marigold Tiffin of the University of Plymouth described the situation as “unusual but not unprecedented in low-conflict estuarine environments,” noting the seals had exhibited “good communication, clear boundaries and a chill attitude to riverbed hopping.”

“It’s not a throuple,” insisted the seals through a spokesperson. “It’s a responsive, non-hierarchical marine intimacy framework. We’re doing the work, okay.”

The announcement has not been welcomed in all quarters. A fourth seal – understood to be a former partner of Mary, widely regarded as the emotional instigator of this riparian polycule – was described as swimming in a melancholy fashion by Bridgetown onlookers last weekend – “She told me she needed to find herself,” lamented the semi-aquatic cuck. Mary is apparently “meditating on attachment styles” and has declined further comment.

Alan Thompson, a genderless, three-day-old cluster of cells drifting in the mud near Vire Island, said the reaction had generated “a lot of unnecessary stigma for what is, at microbial level, a fairly conventional arrangement.”

A joint statement from the seals asked members of the public not to speculate, adding: “All three of us feel chosen, nourished and seen. And we’d appreciate people not filming us from their stand-up paddleboards unless it’s something we’ve consciously aligned on in advance.”

The group will host a seminar on boundaries, consent and migratory co-parenting at the Hairy Barista this Easter weekend.