Who’s the Baby Seal?

This weekend one of my best friend’s, Jenny, invited me to go with her on a by-donation tour of Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue Center.  Jenny is a member of the Nature Vancouver and they arranged this by-donation unique tour opportunity.

The Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue Center is located at the Main Street Docks, which is a very inconspicuous location at the Vancouver ship yard terminals and is fenced off by a green gate for privacy.  For over 40 years the facility has been rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing sick, abandoned, and injured marine mammals.  They mainly take care of harbor seals, but will also take sea lions, elephant seals, sea otters, dolphins, whales, and porpoises.  On our tour they only had harbor seals but earlier in the season they had taken care of an elephant seal named, ‘Cow’, who was released back into the wild and a porpoise named, ‘Daisy’, that was deemed not fit to be released and is now in the Vancouver Aquarium.

Also, every year the names of the marine mammals at the Center are picked by a theme.  This year’s theme was ‘animals’ so the seals had names such as: Human, Deer, and Wolf.  Other years themes have been famous people and countries.

Harbor Seal

I was very impressed by the cleanliness and friendly staff at the location.  Our guide, Kristin, was interesting and informative and took her time to answer the many questions our group had.  Overall, the tour was about 1 hour in length and we had about 15 people on our tour of all ages.  Kristin said that this year the Rescue center had 95 harbor seals and last year 120.  Also, the busiest time for the Rescue Center is in the Summer after the babies are born in the Spring.  For our tour there were no very young babies and a lot of the Seals were getting ready to be released back in the wild.

Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Center

The tour started off in inside of the facility where 13-14 boxes of herring are prepared for the animals everyday.  The animals are fed four times a day.  The center relies heavily on their over 100 Volunteer staff for fish preparation, feeding the seals, and cleaning the tanks.  Kristin pointed out that one of their Volunteers even has a Helicopter and volunteers his time and gas to fly to various locations in British Columbia to pick up seals/other mammals to be rescued.

Volunteer staff getting the Herring ready for feeding time

It was pretty interesting that Kristin explained about Vancouver Aquarium’s 24 hr Seal Hotline at, 604-258-SEAL, where you can talk to staff if you see a seal or another marine mammal you might be concerned is in distress, anywhere in British Columbia.  Kristin was saying it is normal for harbor seal Mothers to leave their pups on rocks while they go to catch fish and if you see a potentially ‘abandoned’ pup to observe it for 24 hours to see if the Mom comes back.  It is not normal to be able to see the seal’s hip or back bones, it means the seal is too thin.

Usually, the seals come in to the Rescue Center dehydrated, malnourished and Hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) and can have such low blood sugars they can even have complications just like humans, such as seizures.  The Rescue Center also has a medical area where they provide Veterinary care such as: physical exams, minor surgical procedures, anesthesia, ultrasound, and radiography.  Some interesting tips are, if you do find a baby seal that needs to be rescued NEVER put a damp towel on it as it can cause further hypothermia and do not feed it as it could make any complications worse without being assessed by a Veterinarian.

Veterinary Treatment Area

Seal Tanks

The Rescue Center is divided into three area for their Seals.  We first viewed the Quarantine Area where seals that needed extra care or had some sort of infection and needed to be isolated in their own tank.  Kristin explained that often the baby seals will come into the Center with their umbilical cords still attached and need to be bottle fed by staff during this time until they are strong enough to eat whole fish.

Harbor Seal with iodine (causing the red color) over his lanced abscesses on his face and body

Partially Blind Seal

The second area was the non-quarantine tanks that had one or two seals in them based on the seal’s weight and these seals were able to eat whole fish.  The staff fed the seals in this area while we were visiting, which was neat, but I was not able to take any good pictures of seal with a fish, they were too fast!  Kristin reminded us to be careful as seals do bite and can be more aggressive when they were getting fed.

Me and a Harbor Seal

The  third area was made up of big tanks where the seals were closer to being released and put into groups so they were able to socialize and have competition catching fish.  The seals in the big tanks were close to 18 kg which is the ideal weight the Rescue Center uses for them to be released.  The Marine Rescue Center has about an average of a 65% release rate back into the wild.  Some of their mammals that cannot be released into the wild are too injured, have low intellectual functioning, or have been rescued more than once.  The mammals that cannot be released go to Aquariums.  Every mammal released from the Center has a tag on it so it can be identified.

Seal Tank with Vancouver’s North Shore Mountains in the background

Our Guide, Kristin, and Harbor Seal ‘Big Mama’

I really enjoyed my tour of the Rescue Center and would love to go again especially in June or July, earlier in their season to see the really young babies.  The Rescue Center is open until October doing by-donation tours with groups if you contact them.  Or, if you want to Volunteer your time or donate money go through the Vancouver Aquarium’s website.

Watching the Seals