Hospi al

Images and words by Nick Upton / naturepl.com

Seal

A young grey seal pup lies washed up and wheezing on a mat of seaweed at Wide-mouth Bay, north Cornwall, UK. Blood weeps from wounds on its body and flippers and there’s no sign of its mother nearby. Without help, it will be dead within hours.

Thankfully, a local café owner has spotted the seal on her morning walk along the beach, and has raised the alarm. A response team is on its way, and a heart-warming tale of rescue, rehabilitation and release is about to unfold...

Many grey seal pups die at sea or on inaccessible shores, but the one that just washed up on Widemouth Bay is one of the lucky ones reported each year to British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), a voluntary network with over 3,500 trai-ned animal medics dedicated to rescuing marine mammals around the UK twenty-four-se-ven throughout the year. From September onwards Dave Jar-vis, a regional co-ordinator for Cornwall, fields hundreds of reports of seal pups in distress found on beaches around the county and on the Scilly Isles

offshore. Dave handles the calls from home alongside his work as a quantity surveyor, and alerts teams of animal medics based closest to where pups have been found. He heads out himself if they’re close to his home near St. Ives, but Wide-mouth Bay is nearly two hours drive away and injured seals need urgent attention. This pup is a job for Bude area co-ordinator and animal medic Michelle Clement, who reaches the beach within 20 minutes of Dave being called. Michelle inspects the pup ca-refully. From its size and coat

colour, she can tell it’s about a month old. The pup is weak and extremely sick; a healthy pup would head for the sea when approached, or at least threaten with its teeth, but this pup barely raises it head, peering at Michelle with big, mournful eyes. The greenish mucus trickling from its nose is another bad sign, and there are deep puncture wounds peppering its body and flip-pers. Michelle dons a face mask before inspecting more closely, as flu viruses and other diseases can pass from seals to humans. She grips a seal wrangler’s best

friend – a trusty towel - as she gets near. Even weakened seal pups can summon hidden reserves of strength and deli-ver nasty bites in self defence, and this pup finally rears up as Michelle approaches, but she soon restrains it by wrapping the towel over its head and safely pins it down by strad-dling it. Seal pups are surpri-singly strong and regular seal handlers report significant toning of the thighs! Michelle inspects the teeth and gums for signs of ulcers, bleeding and damage. They seem okay, but the pup’s breathing is shallow and too fast.

[Left] Café owner Donna La Broy with the injured seal pup she discovered at Widemouth Bay.

[Right] Dave Jarvis fielding reports of in-jured seal pups

[Below] Michelle Cle-ment arrives at the scene.

[Below right] The pup had a bad puncture wound on her flipper.

Rachel Shorland, a new-ly qualified animal medic, joins Michelle within a few minutes and between them they run a series of checks to assess the pup. It’s a fe-male, based on the two ori-fices close together under its tail and its eyes are drier than they should be, a sign of

Grey Seals Under PressureGrey seals are scarcer than African elephants, with a world population of around 300,000 bor-dering the north Atlantic. Some 110,000 live around the UK, breeding in late autumn and ear-ly winter on offshore islands, beaches and coves, clockwise from Devon to Norfolk. In some areas, British populations have been growing, whilst in others they’re in steep decline. Grey seal pups suckle their mother’s rich milk for their first 2-3 weeks, trebling their 12 kilogram birth weight and shedding their fluffy white baby coats, but are then abruptly abandoned when weaned, of-ten on wild rocky shorelines, to fend for them-selves and to begin catching fish. That’s a big ask for all pups, even more so for any separated from their mothers early due to human distur-bance or if their mothers die. Nearly half of all grey seal pups die in their first year, more in stormy winters, and many seals of all ages die through human pressures from che-mical pollution, oil spills, becoming tangled in nets, and boat strikes. Intense culling reduced grey seal numbers to a low point in the UK a hundred years ago, and despite legal protection in 1914 and a recovery in their population, hun-dreds are still shot under license year-round by fish farmers and salmon fishermen in Scotland. The numbers killed illegally may be far higher. Grey seals declined by over 90% in the Baltic Sea in the last century due to pollution and hunting, and across their range they repeatedly come under pressure from fishing interests calling for major culls, despite the lack of any scien-

tific evidence that seals reduce commercial fish stocks.

dehydration. Its temperature of 38C, taken with a rectal thermometer, is around a de-gree above normal, and some of the wounds look deep; the pup definitely needs emer-gency care. Michelle uses an antibiotic spray, and trying not to get bitten, eases a si-licon hose into its mouth and slides it down the pup’s throat to its stomach. Rachel then pours in fluids contai-ning electrolytes and glucose using a funnel. Rehydrating pups quickly is vital as they can die very suddenly wit-hout such help, but this pup

needs further treatment. Between them, they roll it into what looks like an elon-gated sports bag with venti-lated panels, especially desi-gned for seal rescues. Rachel hooks the handles onto a spring balance and braces herself to lift it as Michelle re-cords the pup’s weight. At 27 kg, it’s lighter than it should be for its age and relatively easy to carry off the beach for the next phase of its care. All recovered pups are given names by the rescue teams, and this one is christened Jenga.

Globally, the grey seal is

one of the rarest seal spe-

cies. Almost 50% of the

world population lives in

British & Irish waters.

He called the location in to Dave Jarvis, who recruited the help of aptly-named BDMLR animal medic Simon Dolphin. With the help of divers Mo Samuels and John Wheeler, and their inflatable dinghy, Simon rescued the pup from the cove and ferried it to Crac-

Every rescue is different and the BDMLR teams recount tales of hazardous rope des-cents to rescue pups from the foot of tall cliffs, or arduous climbs up cliff paths while carrying 35kg pups. Rescues are often collabo-rative operations involving many kinds of people. In the same early October week that Jenga washed up, a younger pup with a white baby coat was found by local lifeguard Tom Comber while fishing in a remote cove that people rarely visit. He’d descended a very steep cliff path, using ropes in places, and found the pup in very poor shape.

[Above] BDMLR me-dics Simon Dolphin & Michelle Clement are assisted by divers Mo Samuels and John Wheeler.

[Left & Right] Seal pup ‘Boggle’ is wrapped in a towel to be assessed and treated by Simon & Michelle.

Not all call-outs lead to rescues as some pups have mothers nearby who are still suckling them, while others are heal-thy weaned pups sleeping on beaches between foraging trips. Nevertheless, the rescue team’s help is often crucial. Even heal-thy pups can get into difficul-ties, and one that was found on Tintagel beach surrounded by curious, barking dogs, was relocated by Michelle and her colleagues to a much quieter beach for release, with blue dye sprayed on its back to show it had been handled by BDMLR.

Grey seal mothers locate

their pups in a crowded

breeding colony by smell

and sound. As soon as the

pups are born, mother &

baby begin sniffing and

calling out to eachother.

Grey seals are found all along the rugged coastline of north Cornwall, often in areas that are very hard for rescue teams to reach.

kington Haven beach. Mi-chelle Clement joined them there and the pup was given the same kind of emergency treatment as Jenga. Suffering with a chest infection and a lot of bruising from rocks, the pup was kept for further care, and given the name Boggle.

Pups in very poor condition need immediate veterina-ry care, and Michelle soon transfers Jenga to a ventilated transport crate and drives her to a seal pup treatment facility run by BDMLR’s vo-lunteer vet Darryl Thorpe. He’s worried by the depth of some of her wounds, which he identifies as bite marks, perhaps from a bull seal see-king to mate with her mo-ther, or from another adult female the pup may have approached in error. Sur-face wounds heal quickly, but infections from deep bites down to the bone can be very hard to treat. Darryl takes a blood sample for ana-lysis, injects antibiotics for a mild respiratory infection and checks and swabs Jen-ga’s wounds. With Michelle’s help the pup is given more fluids and the team hope that she will make a full recovery.

as more and more pups were brought to him and built a specially designed seal hos-pital with treatment cubicles and a small pool for injured pups. On Boggle’s arrival af-ter dark on a Saturday, a few hours after his rescue, animal care supervisor Tamara Coo-per and colleague Reychell Harris inspect and treat him with antibiotic sprays and eye drops. The sanctuary’s head veterinary surgeon Paul Riley takes blood samples and injects antibiotics later in the evening.

Boggle [right] was found in a less critical condition and was driven direct to the Cornish Seal Sanctuary at Gweek, near Falmouth, where Jenga and other seals that pass through Darryl’s care will also go to when they’re stable and there’s space. The Sanctuary was founded by Ken Jones who rescued his first grey seal pup in 1958 and looked after in-jured seals for many years at his St.Agnes home. He mo-ved the operation to bigger premises at Gweek in 1975

At birth a seal pup has a

woolly white coat, which

it retains for about three

weeks.

Jenga, Boggle and many other pups brought to the sanctuary are cared for by its wonderfully dedicated staff, who visit them every few hours to check on their condition, administer vet-prescribed treatments ran-ging from decongestants and dewormers, to antibiotics and rehydration fluids and to feed them. Dan Jarvis, son of BDMLR’s Dave Jarvis, is keeping his family’s seal care tradition going and has worked at the sanctuary for nearly 10 years. Days after being rescued, Boggle sheds his white coat and Dan en-courages him to accept fish for the first time, with many complaints at first, but with rapidly growing compliance.

[Left] Dan’s hospital rounds include treating the wounds of Kerplunk who has recently had a badly damaged, infected rear flipper surgically removed by Paul Riley in a novel procedure.

[Right] Dan carefully washes Kerplunk’s eyes with saline solution. This helps irrigate them and prevent infections.

Dan carefully hand-feeds a macke-rel containing medicine to Uno, who has progressed to the hospital’s small pool, before leaving her swimming around in search of more.

Partially blind pup One-eyed Jack searches a bowl of fish Dan has left him, helping the pup learn how to locate food underwater.

Dan leaves a fish for Boggle, who has now shed his white baby coat and has learned to feed for himself.

Dan Jarvis feeds Boggle his first fish

New arrivals keep the care staff busy throughout the seal pup rescue season. Trea-ting the pups as necessary, staff keep them well-fed, and endlessly prepare more fish for them. Mackerel are the staple diet, always caught locally by seal-friendly line fishing, rather than by than netting which often leads to seals being caught by mis-take. Individual portions are carefully weighed for some patients, and various pills and powders concealed inside the fish to ensure the pups take their medicine.

[Clockwise from left] Stacey Pryor cuts up and weighs line-caught mackerel; Medicinal pills are inserted into fish about to be fed to a patient; Seals requiring medicated fish are hand-fed to ensure they re-ceive their treatment.

Jenny Lewis feeds a medicated fish to common seal ‘Buddy’ in his outdoor enclosure.

[Left] In most years seve-ral pups are brought in se-verely entangled in various kinds of netting from the fishing and transport in-dustries, usually with deep injuries to the neck. One pup, Iron man, arrived entangled with rope cuts right down to his spine, while Joker and Beast had similar injuries nearly as bad, but all made remar-kable progress at the sanc-tuary.

Once off the critical list, Jen-ga, Boggle and other recove-ring pups are moved to ou-tdoor nursery pools, where fish are thrown from a plat-form above by the care team so the pups won’t associate people with food.

Given plenty of fish and treatment for their wounds, seal pups have amazing powers of recovery, even with deep wounds from ropes, jagged rocks, or adult seal and dog bites.

Seal pups in the outdoor nursery pools are closely monitored by care staff to ensure that they continue feeding well in the water - an essen-tial skill if they are to survive in the wild.

A few of the rescued pups brought to the sanctuary have problems that can’t be cured, such as Ray [left], a happy, cheeky charac-ter who was rescued as a pup in 2001 with a deformed head and brain damage, possibly inflicted in stormy conditions. He loves a good rub down with a broom, enjoys chasing gulls and stealing the water hose off the Animal Care team. He’s so popular with staff and visitors that he has his own Facebook page!

Sheba has remained vir-tually blind since she was rescued as a pup in the 1970’s with bad eye infections. Now over 40 years old, her playful, so-ciable nature makes her a much-loved seal.

Snoopy is an old female, who spent over 20 years living in zoos before co-ming to the sanctuary in 2004. She likes to keep herself to herself at one end of the communal pool.

Marlin was rescued as a pup wrapped in netting in 2002 and is comple-tely blind, but he remains lively and aware of what goes on around him. He can sometimes be a bit of a bully to the pups!

Badger is a rare all-black seal with thyroid problems that mean he would starve if released back into the wild. Ray likes to lead him astray, teaching Badger some of his tricks.

Yulelog was rescued in 1989, kept in a marine park for 4 years until it closed and had to be rescued after lo-sing weight rapidly on being released, and showing no idea how to feed himself. He overeats if given a chance, splashing the staff to demand more fish, but has slim-med to a respectable 300 kgs, and is really enthusiastic and energetic when playing with toys like a ball, rub-ber ring or surfboard.

MEET THE RESIDENTS

Whilst the aim of the seal sanctuary is to rehabilitate and release seals, those who would not survive on their own remain at the Sanctuary as permanent guests.

The Cornish Seal Sanctuary is also home to common seals (half as common as grey seals in UK waters) as well as sealions from zoos that no longer have space for them, short-clawed otters from a facility with no outdoor space, and a conservation bree-ding colony of rare Humboldt penguins.

Even seals that become blind as adults have a good chance of survival

in the wild, thanks to their acute sense of smell and highly sensitive

whiskers, which can detect pressure waves in the water.

Seals show individual per-sonalities in the ways they interact with each other, how playful they are, and how they react to being trained (with whistles and a target stick) to lie down and allow health checks to be performed and minor ailments treated.

When they’re strong enough, the recovering pups join others in a communal conva-lescence pool, alongside long-term resident adults with handicaps too severe to allow release back to the wild. The seals are hand-fed with fish containing medi-cine several times a day or compete to catch mackerel thrown over the fence, ma-king a great spectacle for the sanctuary’s many visitors to enjoy as the seals race around the pool. The income from visitors is crucial to funding seal rescue work.

In the convalescence pool, seal pups learn to compete for food, and prac-tise the social skills they will need to survive in the wild. Although grey seal pups do not typically interact with each other in the first few months of their lives, both wild and cap-tive seals grow up to become extremely social. From around six months onwards, they engage in play with other pups - chasing, rolling and splashing around in the water - as well as greeting one another, and adult seals, nose-to-nose.

Despite around fifty pups ar-riving at the sanctuary with severe injuries and illness each year, nearly all recover fully, pile on the pounds and become fit for release. On a few red-letter days every year, their pool is drained, a cage placed carefully over each one and a group loaded onto a trailer to be driven to local beaches on the coast that they were recovered from. Like a pack of excited

puppies heading out for a walk, they climb over each other to peer from the trailer and raise their heads to sniff deeply as they approach the sea.

The seals peer from the trailer and

raise their heads to sniff deeply as

they approach the sea

Did you Know? The scien-

tific name for the grey

Seal, Halichoerus grypus,

translates from the Latin

as ‘hook-nosed Sea-pig’!

Release days attract several onlookers to watch the event, and off-duty sanctuary staff often come along as well as Dave Jarvis, his wife Lesley and his young granddaugh-ter who’s already showing an interest in seals. The pups edge out slowly at first, then more quickly as the bra-

vest shuffle down the beach and enter the waves; others hold back nervous-ly at first, but soon join the rest in their natural element, swimming strongly out to sea to fish for themselves.

The story doesn’t end there though. Each released pup has a numbered flipper tag and a unique coat pattern, allowing a dedicated team of seal resear-chers to follow their fate. Sue Sayer has run the Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust for over 10 years, with a network of volunteers across the southwest and beyond sending her reports and photographs of seals. Sue regularly monitors grey seals herself, viewing and photogra-phing them from clifftops and boats, always from a distance that won’t disturb the seals.

Records from Sue’s network of observers show that Cornish seals regularly travel long dis-tances between resting, moul-ting and breeding sites, often reaching Devon, Wales and France. Sue’s records challenge the common notion that seals live in well-defined static “colonies”, but instead visit different loca-tions to rest between foraging trips, a bit like service stations on seal motorways. Foraging trips can last for days, with seals sometimes travelling 40km or more out to sea.

Grey seal coat patterns are so distinc-tive that using her phenomenal recall, Sue can immediately recognise hun-dreds by sight.

Seal-watching boat trips can be booked in many places in summertime. Responsible operators know not to visit breeding sites in autumn and winter. Seals at haul-out spots can become used to approaching boats and even seem curious, swimming out to stare back at people. But avoid loca-tions where too many boats pressure and disturb the seals.

Volunteer researchers recording cetaceans and seals off the Cornish coast,

while Sue Sayer takes reference photos from

the back of the boat.

Sue Sayer and Kate Hockley of the Cornwall Seal Group watch grey seals from a cliff top.

Sue’s photographic catalogues contain images of thousands of seals, all given names that help describe their coat pat-terns, such as Clouds and Ar-row U. Sue manually matches new photos of each seal to her existing records. Whilst tag numbers sometimes wear off after a couple of years, seal coat patterns never change, and the 1300 plus sightings of tag-ged seals Sue has on file from England, Wales, Holland and France show that rehabilita-ted pups fare well after release, even those rescued with severe injuries.

Another longer-term success story has just been revealed thanks to photographs taken by two of Sue’s diligent recorders, Alec and Enid Farr, at their local site on the Lizard in sou-thwest Cornwall. They photo-graphed a seal there they knew as Brush, who gave birth to her own pup in October 2015. When they noticed that Brush had a flipper tag, Sue’s photo-graphic files revealed that she herself had rescued Brush as a white pup seven years earlier on the north coast near St.Ives. Rescues, and Sue’s tracking stu-dies, really do work!

Beast was found as a four month old pup, en-tangled in netting which had cut deeply into his neck. He was rescued in January 2015 by members of the BDMLR team, and rehabilita-ted at The Cornish Seal Sanctuary. Following his release in March 2015, Beast has been spotted and photographed more than 10 times, at various spots along the north Cornish coast. Whilst his scarred neck is still obvious, it has healed well.

[Left] Sue Sayer holds up a 9m section of fishing net and a photo of Iron Man, who was found entangled in it.

[Below] Iron Man recove-red from his injuries at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary and was released in March 2015.

Send sighting reports and photos - even very dis-tant ones - of grey seals taken in the southwest, to Sue Sayer so she can extend her photographic records and track seal movements: sue@cornwallsealgroup.co.uk

Support seal care organisations with visits, dona-tions or by adopting captive or wild seals, and sup-port seal-friendly fisheries that have “no-shoot” policies.

Train as an animal medic with BDMLR who run public courses throughout the year.

Grey seals can be seen at a number of sites around the UK, but care should be taken not to disturb them, especially when breeding. Resting seals need to relax after long fishing trips to digest their food, and human disturbance can cause a breeding group to stampede to the sea, with young pups of-ten getting crushed by adults in the panic.

Injured, sick or unresponsive seal pups should be reported to BDMLR http://www.bdmlr.org.uk on their hotline 01825 765546, or RSPCA / SSPCA call centres, local coastguards or RNLI lifeguards, or local seal rescue facilities such as the Cornish Seal Sanctuary https://www.visitsealife.com/gweek/ , Orkney Seal Rescue, Sea Life Centres in Oban, Scarborough or Hunstanton, or The Welsh Mountain Zoo.

Help clean up beaches and the sea. Lost fishing equipment or “ghost gear” and other marine litter

(old nets, ropes and plastics) can entangle or poison seals and other

wildlife.

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Getting InvolvedJenga, Boggle, Beast and many other pups owe their lives to the commitment and skills of a host of people, but the grey seal, one of the rarest of all seals, still needs a lot more help and vigilance to survive the many increasing pressures it faces around the crowded British Isles and across its full Atlantic range.

Contact:

timaldred@naturepl.com

+44 (0)117 911 4675