Sylvester the seal was one hungry baby by the time he was discovered by a passerby on a muddy section of beach between a log boom and the Quayside Esplanade in New Westminster Saturday.
The 14-day-old harbour seal pup was weak with hunger and likely hadn’t eaten in days, according to Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre veterinary technician Andrew Celmainis.
“A healthy pup, I should not be able to get anywhere near it,” Celmainis told the Record. “It should see me and take off and try and haul out away from me, but this particular guy, I could literally walk right up to, put my hand on it. …He’d just pretty much lie there because he was quite exhausted and emaciated at the time.”
The Marine Mammal Rescue Centre got the call Saturday afternoon after a man reported the seal pup to New West animal services. The centre’s advice when an apparently abandoned baby seal is discovered is for the public to keep its distance and call the centre directly.
“Sometimes people think an animal needs rescuing and they don’t, and really what you’re doing is you’re scaring the mom off when she’s really just off fishing and waiting for you to take off,” said Celmainis, who added seal pups actually spend a lot of time on land. “People want to stand around it and take pictures because it’s adorable, but the mom’s sitting there waiting, and then the mom takes off, and then it’s an abandoned pup. It happens all the time.”
Normally, the rescue centre will monitor a pup for 24 hours to make sure the mom’s not coming back before taking the baby to its Vancouver facility, but photos of Sylvester showed he was emaciated and skinny and needed help right away.
“If they’re a certain weight, you can really see the indentation on their neck or they have rolls,” Celmainis said. “Rolls indicate they’re skinny, not actually fat because those are not fat rolls; they’re skin rolls. That often means that the mom’s taken off on them and they’ve gone without food for days on end.”
The busy Fraser River, with its shifting log booms and busy boat traffic, is no place for such a vulnerable pup, so Celmainis drove out and brought Sylvester back to the centre in a crate.
“It was pretty obvious that he had to come in,” he said.
Sylvester will spend about a month and a half at the centre, where he will be tube fed formula before being introduced to fish when he is ready.
“He’s looking good,” Celmainis said. “He’s still underweight, but he’s on the mend.”
When Sylvester is big enough, he’ll be released back into the wild. The New Westminster seal is the 103rd pup rescued by the centre so far this year. The public can follow their recovery on the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre Facebook page.
Does the adorableness of the baby seals ever wear off?
“That’s not really possible,” Celmainis said with a laugh. “Every staff member here has about 100 seal photos on their cell phone.”
For more information or to report a marine mammal in distress, call 604-258-SEAL (7325) or visit www.vanaqua.org/act/direct-action/marine-mammal-rescue.
