After nursing four rescued harbor seal pups back to health over the summer, the Alaska SeaLife Center released the now-grown seals back into the wild on Thursday at Kenai Beach.
The four kennels containing the soon-to-be-released seals were carried to the beach, where more than 100 onlookers anxiously awaited. The seals would return to the ocean after a three-month recovery in Seward.
The SeaLife Center takes in a host of wildlife every year for various reasons and prepares them for a return to their natural environment. In the case of harbor seals, they have usually been separated from their mother or abandoned, so they’re very skinny, tired, dehydrated, and sick, said ASLC Wildlife Response Curator Jane Belovarac.
Belovarac said that in the wild, seal mothers only feed their young for a couple of months before letting them fend on their own. For rescued pups, the SeaLife Center has to fill that gap.
“Our job is to kind of be mom and get them as fast as we can and then we let them go and they are able to eat fish on their own–[Once] they’re a certain weight and we show that they can compete with other seals to get their food,” said Belovarac.
But it’s not an easy process. Many of the pups come to ASLC malnourished and sick, and it’s the job of the specialists there to nurse them back to health.
“Once they are starting to gain weight and starting to feel healthier, they will then transition to fish formula around 3 weeks old,” Belovarac explained.
The work doesn’t end after the release, however. Three of the seals at the beach on Thursday featured some new tech: radio trackers affixed to their backs. According to Belovarac, the trackers allow the SeaLife Center to keep tabs on the seals, at least for a little while.
“Usually we get information for about two months or so, but our record is around 10 months that we’ve gotten information,” Belovarac said.
This release was one of a few that will happen for rescued seal pups. Another ASLC release is scheduled for the near future in Wrangell.
