News: Seals Take Long Island
(Long Island, N.Y.) Last week an adult harp seal came back to the Long Island Sound after making it all the way to the shores of Fairfield, Connecticut. It was monitored by the Fairfield Animal Control Center when it made an appearance near a country club in Sasco Beach. This is one of many seal sightings to happen recently in the Long Island and tri-state area.
Harp seals are gray with black faces and large black spots on their bodies. This particular seal, though healthy, was noted to have conjunctivitis in its right eye. Witnesses said the seal repeatedly came on and off the shore before managing to catch a large fish.
Frequently, seals that wash up on the shoreline are easily stressed, and are often sick or dying. Therefore, it’s important that they are not disturbed by people or their pets. The law requires beachgoers to stay a hundred feet away from these protected animals, which can be dangerous to pets (and vice versa) due to the transmittance of animal pathogens.
It’s not uncommon for seals to reach the shoreline of Connecticut in early Spring; an estimated 4-5 seals do so yearly. Though they usually stay close to Canada, at least six seals have been spotted in a week between the shores of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Some reasons for the heightened number of seal-spotting could be the presence of a food source, a boost in the seal population, or repeated sightings of the same seal.
Another instance of seal findings on Long Island occurred at Montauk State Park. An abandoned baby seal was spotted on February 12th with its umbilical cord still attached to its body. Unfortunately, the seal perished last week from an ongoing respiratory infection.
The baby seal, named “Ozzy”, was only thirty-five pounds and three feet long, and in desperate need of the nutrient value found naturally in its mother’s milk. Ozzy was transported from Montauk to the Long Island Research Facility headquarters in the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation for safety. He was only a day or two old when a biologist took him into custody.
In addition to the respiratory infection, which was believed to be pneumonia, Ozzy may have suffered from multiple rib fractures. During his stay at Atlantis Aquarium a team of biologists administered antibiotics, fluids, and ground fish around the clock via a feeding tube. Despite constant monitoring of his blood levels, biologists were dismayed to find that Ozzy’s condition never improved.
Seal pups are usually born in February to mid-March in areas like Greenland and Newfoundland, and immediately begin to gorge on their mother’s milk. They gain about five pounds per day for about two weeks. Then they are separated from their mothers, left to fend for themselves, and can lose up to half of their body weight post-separation. Though the infant mortality rate for seals is very high at roughly 50%, adult male seals can weigh eight hundred pounds and grow six feet in length.
A three-hundred pound male “hoodie” seal was found at Salisbury Beach on Valentine’s Day and a similar-sized seal was recently found in Massachusetts. It stayed in the area for an entire day without moving much before returning to the sea. Experts say that the seal was not necessarily sick, but it’s often that seals display unusual behavior in the presence of humans; some seals are known to eat sand.
Seals aren’t normally defensive animals but they are capable of biting. Workers of local marine centers urge the public to call authorities or the Animal Control Center in the instance of seal findings. As for Ozzy, biologists plan on conducting an autopsy to see if he suffered any other unknown ailments before giving him a proper burial and alerting the four-hundred friends added to his Facebook page.
