Dragon the Magic Harbor Seal
“She was bleeding from her nose and was very thin. She was found in the Shilshole Marina and was monitored for a few days. She was old enough to be on her own so we didn’t want to pick her up if she could fight it off. It turned out she couldn’t, so she was picked up and brought to SR3 and has been with us for a couple months.”
The “she” to which Casey Mclean referred was a sub-adult female harbor seal named Dragon. A group of about twenty spectators had gathered at the Fort Ward boat launch on the south end of Bainbridge Island on a rainy midday in May to watch Dragon’s release into the Salish Sea. But first Mclean, the executive director and veterinary nurse at Sealife Response, Rehabilitation and Research (SR3), shared Dragon’s case study with her amassed well-wishers.
Dragon was starving at twelve pounds and suffering from lung worms when SR3 took her in as a patient.
“She went through some pretty intensive treatments, Mclean recounted. “If you think of heartworm with dogs, how we treat that, this is the same type of treatment. So there’s a lot of concern that this treatment can be fatal.”
Thankfully, in Dragon’s case, it wasn’t.
“She pulled through really well and she started gaining weight,” Mclean beamed. “So she’s nice and round now, as you’ll see. She doesn’t really have much of a neck, just as they should be.”
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As their name suggests, SR3 works with marine animals in a number of capacities. They are responders, working to free entrapped or stranded marine animals in the Puget Sound region; they operate the Pacific Northwest’s only hospital dedicated to marine wildlife, with a 30 - 40 seal, sea lion, sea otter, and harbor porpoise patient capacity; and they research Salish Sea marine mammals as indicator species of the region’s overall health.
Mclean founded SR3, and when I followed up with her to ask her why she did this work, she replied, “Humans' everyday actions, whether that be as individuals or big industry, greatly impact the marine environment. Every animal that comes in to the facility is suffering due to a human cause in one way or another, we are not admitting animals that are just dying of old age. It is our collective responsibility to correct our mistakes that are causing these animals to suffer.”
“Cetacean (dolphins, porpoises, whales) strandings have increased from ~2 animals per year in the 1970s to nearly 40 per year in the last decade,” reads the SR3 website, corroborating the human impact on local marine life Mclean named. One of the organization’s blog posts highlights its involvement in the disentanglement of a transient orca from a crab pot last summer: “Bigg’s killer whale T65A5 ‘Indy’ was observed entangled in legally-set recreational crab pot gear on July 5th in Puget Sound. SR3, along with our partners, stand trained and ready year-round to respond to urgent situations like this,” opens the post.
Indy freed himself, in the end. He swam into shallow water where the crab pot made contact with the seabed, the line slackened, and he was able to slip it. He was observed five days later reunited with his mother and five siblings in waters near the Canadian border.
But one point is repeated in the post: “It is important to note that this gear was legally set and configured.” In other words, we allow this to happen. And someone has to take action when it does.
“I sometimes find it hard to compel people to make changes in their everyday activities that are harming the oceans when I talk about fish or invertebrates, although I care about them,” Mclean continued in our correspondence. “Charismatic megafauna (marine mammals), with their big eyes and iconic status, cause people to pause and consider if they could make that small sacrifice to help them. I want all future generations to get to see healthy whales, seals and sea lions thriving in the Salish Sea.”
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On the Fort Ward boat launch, Mclean gave us a snapshot of Dragon’s life, post-release.
“She’s been alone for a long time at the hospital, which always makes us a little bit sad because they are pretty social out there,” she said, gesturing toward the sea. “So we’re happy to get her back out. Maybe she’ll encounter the seal that you guys have seen out here swimming around.”
Mclean pointed south down the beach, “We chose this location because down here to the left there is a seal haul out. So we’re hoping she might find those other seals and reorient herself to the general area.”
The 4,300 feet of saltwater shoreline protected from development at Fort Ward and other waterfront parks like it are crucial to marine mammals who have otherwise been pushed off their waterfront habitats throughout Puget Sound. But despite habitat pressures, harbor seal populations are strong in this region and Mclean was confident in Dragon’s prognosis, “She’s young, she’ll figure it out.”
Harbor seals live within a thirty mile range for the entirety of their 20-30 year long lives. Dragon, who is still less than a year old, will begin reproducing at three to four years of age and have a single pup at a time.
“We’ve entered pupping season,” Mclean told us, “so I apologize if I look like a zombie or say anything crazy, but I’ve been up all night with our newest baby [harbor seal pup]. It’s an intensive care process with this little one – born on Vashon about two months early and is requiring round the clock care.”
As a couple volunteers hoisted a dog crate out of the bed of a pickup truck and began making their way toward the slope of the boat ramp, Mclean told us about Dragon’s various markings. She wore a red hat tag to help identify her while a patient at the hospital and for a while after release. “That’s just glued onto her fur,” Mclean noted, “So that helps us monitor her for a short period of time if people see it, but it’s not a satellite tracker.”
Dragon would also have an orange tag on her right rear flipper, she told us, with a number unique to her. And, she concluded, “Harbor seals can also be identified by their spot pattern. Just like our thumbprints, it’s unique to each individual.” While identifying seals by their spots is a tedious process – one that can’t be simply eyeballed – “If people take pictures out there, we can often identify who it is,” Mclean informed us. “I think now eight of our patients have been reported post-release.”
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Finally, the volunteers hauling Dragon in her dog crate set her down on the boat ramp. A camera was placed on a tripod at ground level on the waterline.
Mclean told us Dragon weighed in at a healthy fifty-four pounds that morning before leaving the facility in the Des Moines Marina, south of Seattle.
“No breakfast, so she’s hungry,” she continued. “We do that so they are hungry, so that’ll inspire them to go hunt for food. She was not happy about it though…”
She and a number of colleagues and volunteers grabbed red body-boards and stood flanking the dog crate, creating a clear line of travel for Dragon, whose whiskered face we glimpsed for the first time as the door was unlatched.
“I’ll just ask as we open the door that you guys remain quiet. If she starts to head your way back up so she has straight access to the water,” Mclean instructed us.
Out plopped Dragon, glancing around at the gathered crowd. Her round body was tan with dark brown spotting, but her head was still covered with white pup fuzz, atop of which was affixed the hat tag Mclean had mentioned.
The red disc was the size of a sand dollar. It reminded me of the tika, the blessing of red vermillion powder mixed with curd placed on the foreheads of the young by their elders during the Nepali Hindu festival Dashain. A demonstration of care, a public acceptance of responsibility, a blessing on her head.
I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. My heart wobbled. Never more thankful for the coverage of my sunglasses, I felt warm tears breaching my lower lids and spilling down my cheeks. Dragon continued waddling down the mossy boat ramp, glancing from side to side at the twenty people who maybe, like me, were also crying behind their sunglasses.
She scooted past the last camera at the water’s edge, paused and turned back to the crowd and Mclean, whom I imagined she knew quite well (another wobble!), and then turned and slipped into the sea where she was instantly transformed into the most graceful little neckless puddle of fat and spots I’d ever seen swimming in the clear salt water.
