here

Seal
Hospi al
Images and words by
Nick Upton / naturepl.com
A young grey seal pup lies washed up and
wheezing on a mat of seaweed at Widemouth 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...
[Left] Café owner
Donna La Broy with
the injured seal pup
she discovered at
Widemouth Bay.
[Right] Dave Jarvis
fielding reports of injured seal pups
[Below] Michelle Clement arrives at the
scene.
[Below right] The pup
had a bad puncture
wound on her flipper.
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 trained animal medics dedicated
to rescuing marine mammals
around the UK twenty-four-seven throughout the year. From
September onwards Dave Jarvis, 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 Widemouth Bay is nearly two hours
drive away and injured seals
need urgent attention. This
pup is a job for Bude area coordinator and animal medic
Michelle Clement, who reaches
the beach within 20 minutes of
Dave being called.
Michelle inspects the pup carefully. 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 flippers. 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 deliver 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 straddling it. Seal pups are surprisingly 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.
Grey Seals Under Pressure
Rachel Shorland, a newly 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 female, based on the two orifices close together under
its tail and its eyes are drier
than they should be, a sign of
Globally, the grey seal is
one of the rarest seal species. Almost 50% of the
world population lives in
British & Irish waters.
dehydration. Its temperature
of 38C, taken with a rectal
thermometer, is around a degree above normal, and some
of the wounds look deep; the
pup definitely needs emergency care. Michelle uses an
antibiotic spray, and trying
not to get bitten, eases a silicon hose into its mouth
and slides it down the pup’s
throat to its stomach. Rachel
then pours in fluids containing electrolytes and glucose
using a funnel. Rehydrating
pups quickly is vital as they
can die very suddenly without such help, but this pup
needs further treatment.
Between them, they roll it
into what looks like an elongated sports bag with ventilated panels, especially designed for seal rescues. Rachel
hooks the handles onto a
spring balance and braces
herself to lift it as Michelle records 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.
Grey seals are scarcer than African elephants,
with a world population of around 300,000 bordering the north Atlantic. Some 110,000 live
around the UK, breeding in late autumn and early 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, often on wild rocky shorelines, to fend for themselves 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 disturbance 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 chemical 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, hundreds 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 scientific evidence that
seals reduce
commercial
fish stocks.
Grey seals are found all along the rugged coastline of
north Cornwall, often in areas that are very hard for
rescue teams to reach.
[Above] BDMLR medics 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.
Every rescue is different and
the BDMLR teams recount
tales of hazardous rope descents to rescue pups from the
foot of tall cliffs, or arduous
climbs up cliff paths while
carrying 35kg pups.
Rescues are often collaborative 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.
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.
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-
kington Haven beach. Michelle 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.
Not all call-outs lead to rescues
as some pups have mothers
nearby who are still suckling
them, while others are healthy weaned pups sleeping on
beaches between foraging trips.
Nevertheless, the rescue team’s
help is often crucial. Even healthy pups can get into difficulties, 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.
Pups in very poor condition
need immediate veterinary care, and Michelle soon
transfers Jenga to a ventilated
transport crate and drives
her to a seal pup treatment
facility run by BDMLR’s volunteer 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 seeking to mate with her mother, or from another adult
female the pup may have
approached in error. Surface wounds heal quickly,
but infections from deep
bites down to the bone can
be very hard to treat. Darryl
takes a blood sample for analysis, injects antibiotics for
a mild respiratory infection
and checks and swabs Jenga’s wounds. With Michelle’s
help the pup is given more
fluids and the team hope that
she will make a full recovery.
At birth a seal pup has a
woolly white coat, which
it retains for about three
weeks.
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 injured seals for many years at
his St.Agnes home. He moved the operation to bigger
premises at Gweek in 1975
as more and more pups were
brought to him and built a
specially designed seal hospital with treatment cubicles
and a small pool for injured
pups. On Boggle’s arrival after dark on a Saturday, a few
hours after his rescue, animal
care supervisor Tamara Cooper 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.
[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.
Dan Jarvis
feeds Boggle
his first fish
[Right] Dan carefully
washes Kerplunk’s eyes
with saline solution.
This helps irrigate them
and prevent infections.
Dan carefully hand-feeds a mackerel containing medicine to Uno, who
has progressed to the hospital’s small
pool, before leaving her swimming
around in search of more.
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 vetprescribed treatments ranging 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 encourages him to accept fish
for the first time, with many
complaints at first, but with
rapidly growing compliance.
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.
[Clockwise from left] Stacey
Pryor cuts up and weighs linecaught mackerel;
Medicinal pills are inserted
into fish about to be fed to a
patient;
Seals requiring medicated fish
are hand-fed to ensure they receive their treatment.
New arrivals keep the care
staff busy throughout the
seal pup rescue season. Treating 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 mistake. Individual portions
are carefully weighed for
some patients, and various
pills and powders concealed
inside the fish to ensure the
pups take their medicine.
Jenny Lewis feeds a medicated
fish to common seal ‘Buddy’ in
his outdoor enclosure.
Once off the critical list, Jenga, Boggle and other recovering pups are moved to outdoor nursery pools, where
fish are thrown from a platform 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.
[Left] In most years several pups are brought in severely entangled in various
kinds of netting from the
fishing and transport industries, 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 remarkable progress at the sanctuary.
Seal pups in the
outdoor nursery
pools are closely
monitored by care
staff to ensure
that they continue
feeding well in the
water - an essential 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 character 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!
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 breeding 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.
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.
Sheba has remained virtually blind since she
was rescued as a pup in
the 1970’s with bad eye
infections. Now over 40
years old, her playful, sociable nature makes her a
much-loved seal.
Snoopy is an old female,
who spent over 20 years
living in zoos before coming 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 completely 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 allblack 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 losing 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 slimmed to a respectable 300 kgs, and is really enthusiastic
and energetic when playing with toys like a ball, rubber ring or surfboard.
When they’re strong enough,
the recovering pups join
others in a communal convalescence 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 medicine several times a day or
compete to catch mackerel
thrown over the fence, making 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.
Seals show individual personalities 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.
In the convalescence pool, seal pups
learn to compete for food, and practise 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 captive 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.
The seals peer from the trailer and
raise their heads to sniff deeply as
they approach the sea
Despite around fifty pups arriving 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
Did you Know? The scientific name for the grey
Seal, Halichoerus grypus,
translates from the Latin
as ‘hook-nosed Sea-pig’!
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.
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 granddaughter 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 nervously at first, but
soon join the rest
in their natural element,
swimming strongly out to
sea to fish for themselves.
Sue Sayer and Kate Hockley
of the Cornwall Seal Group
watch grey seals from a cliff
top.
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 locations 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.
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 researchers 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 photographing 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 distances between resting, moulting 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 locations 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 distinctive that using her phenomenal recall,
Sue can immediately recognise hundreds by sight.
Sue’s photographic catalogues
contain images of thousands
of seals, all given names that
help describe their coat patterns, such as Clouds and Arrow 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 tagged seals Sue has on file from
England, Wales, Holland and
France show that rehabilitated pups fare well after release,
even those rescued with severe
injuries.
[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 recovered from his
injuries at the
Cornish Seal
Sanctuary and
was released in
March 2015.
Beast was found as a four month old pup, entangled in netting which had cut deeply into
his neck. He was rescued in January 2015 by
members of the BDMLR team, and rehabilitated 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.
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 southwest Cornwall. They photographed 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 photographic 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 studies, really do work!
Jenga, 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.
Getting Involved
1
2
3
4
5
6
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 often 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.
Send sighting reports and photos - even very distant ones - of grey seals taken in the southwest,
to Sue Sayer so she can extend her photographic
records and track seal movements:
[email protected]
Support seal care organisations with visits, donations or by adopting captive or wild seals, and support seal-friendly fisheries that have “no-shoot”
policies.
Train as an animal medic with BDMLR who run
public courses throughout the year.
Contact:
[email protected]
+44 (0)117 911 4675