Surfing Waves

The Marine Mammal Center is a great organization!

On Friday I spotted a beached seal pup surrounded by 50 seagulls ready for lunch. It was malnourished and barely moving. I paddled in, chased the birds away and called the Rescue Center. After getting a few pictures and a video of the situation they sent a volunteer crew all the way from Sausalito to pick up the baby and begin the process of nursing it to health. Very inspiring to see them work!

http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/what-we-do/

I have worked on a variety of marine mammals including seals but not much lately. I once helped transport a baby monk seal from a crowded beach to an isolated beach. This was after it was abandoned by its mother

It's amazing how much fight a starving pup can muster when faced with going into a crate. It took 5 volunteers and specialized tools to get the job done!

I my case it was a healthy pup. They are all abandoned by their mother and need to learn to fend for themselves at some point but NOAA prefers they do so at beaches where less humans go so that they don't get used to humans which can cause issues later. I was just along for the ride and to be there in case there was a problem requiring my skills.

Well done Boman. Although seals eat all the fish - that’s why I can never catch any.

That may be an excuse

The seals over here learn to beg from the fishermen and also take live bait occasionally getting hooked in the process. I try to tell the fishermen to not give bait or fish to the seals. They tell me it is the only way to make the seal go away. I try to point out that giving them food is the only way to make sure the seal comes back for more the next time. I think harbor seals are different from the monk seals we have over here. It may well be that pup was abandoned by it's mother due to some human encroachment of their habitat.

Sadly, my little guy died while being treated for Leptospirosis. Perhaps Old Man Surfer can shed some light on this disease.

I'm keeping the California 24-hour hotline in my backpack: 415-289-SEAL (7325)

Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that is shed in the urine of mammals. These bacteria are very easy to kill outside of a living organism. Saltwater kills it, sunshine kills it, almost anything kills it but it finds places to exist in animals where it is protected. There are more than a hundred different species of leptospirosis and most of them have a species that they can live in and not cause much harm. These animals shed it in their urine. In other species it can cause great harm. So there is a species that occurs in dogs and doesn't harm them but it can kill humans or a species that occurs in rats that kills dogs and people but not rats. So seals must get exposed to it on the shoreline where they spend a good amount of time during molting. Or perhaps some of them go into freshwater habitats then and acquire it there then spread it to other seals on the shoreline.

oldmansurfer wrote:Some of them go into freshwater habitats then and acquire it there then spread it to other seals on the shoreline.

Thanks...you are right. There's a freshwater lagoon near the break.