SR3, part two
“Harbor seals are extremely skittish,” reported Casey Mclean, marine biologist, veterinary nurse and executive director at SR3. Sometimes all it takes for a mother harbor seal to abandon her pup for good is a concerned person showing up anywhere in the vicinity. That’s why Mclean is adamant, “The best thing we can do for a marine animal in distress is keep our distance and call in the experts.”
I worked my way through the tent, taking in each of the five harbor seal pups in residence. The coloration, age, and care requirements varied from pup to pup, but each, at five o’clock in the evening as we toured their nursery, was hungry and crying out for food.
This cry, which a harbor seal mother can hear and recognize as her pup’s from as far as a kilometer away, is often misconstrued as a distress cry, leading a lot of well-meaning people to “rescue” harbor seal pups who simply need to feed.
The pups have to be separated from each other at this stage in their recovery at the facility operated by Sealife Rescue, Rehabilitation and Research (SR3) in DesMoines, Washington marina. Some carry contagions and all are vulnerable as pups away from their mothers and natural environments. So they are kept in separate blue crates – all furnished with boppies, some with heat lamps – until they are at weaning age and ready for the communal pool where they’ll learn to fish and compete for food.
A couple of the pup crates had been made into kiddie pools, filled with salt water and “enrichment toys” – long strips of green felt that mimic kelp. A dark gray pup registered her hunger from one of them. She whirled like a dervish through the green ribbons, slapped the water with her flippers, and bellowed on her little kazoo of a voice box.
We had been instructed to keep our voices to a minimum and not get overly interactive with the pups – the goal of their rehabilitation is to rewild them, after all – and I attempted to stifle my obvious delight behind my hand as I watched her twirl and splash.
I took a second round through the nursery tent, trying to hear nuances in the pups’ voices, before filing out with the rest of the group.
+
Back inside, Mclean and SR3’s veterinarian Dr. Michelle Rivard presented on the final R in the organization’s name: research. Both, and other researchers and marine biologists within the organization, are able to utilize their research focuses away from home to benefit local marine environments and animals.
Dr. Rivard travels annually to Nova Scotia where she is part of a research consortium studying gray seals. She provides veterinary care and ensures proper sedation of the animals being studied, and in return she is able to “transfer a knowledge base to the Pacific Northwest that we can apply to our local seals and sea lions,” an SR3 blog post celebrates.
Mclean’s research passion is sea turtles and her expertise and research experience also transfers to local waters.
“Sea turtles should never be in Puget Sound,” Mclean noted, but it does happen, and increasingly. “In the previous twenty-five years, the Puget Sound region reported eight sea turtle strandings,” she reported. “We’ve had four in the years since SR3 was founded in 2021.”
The turtles will inadvertently ride warm currents far from their home waters. Climate change is causing those warm currents to reach farther and farther north. The problem arises when the turtles exit the warm water currents and find themselves in temperatures in which they cannot survive.
“They get cold stunned,” Mclean told us. Not only is this a potentially fatal condition if they don’t quickly find warmer water, but in their cold water torpor they’re also more likely to be struck by a boat. “If you ever see a sea turtle in Puget Sound, please call the marine animal stranding network,” she urged.
+
Side by side images of two gray whales were projected onto a screen at the front of the room where Mclean and Dr. Rivard presented. “We are able to use drone photography now to track our Sounders,” Mclean shared. “We used to have to take these images from airplanes – it was the Indiana Jones moment for our marine biologists who literally had to snap pictures hanging out of the doors.” The new method is both safer for the researchers and less invasive for the whales.
“We’re able to take these images from 100-150 feet above the water – they don’t even know we’re there,” she continued.
A brief video clip showed a pair of SR3 researchers, Dr. Holly Fearnbach and Dr. John Durban, deploying a drone from a boat. Dr. Fearnbach hunched beneath a blanket where she captured footage broadcast by the drone, directing its movement verbally, while Dr. Durban controlled the drone’s movement with a remote.
Mclean referred again to the gray whale images. “We’re able to tell a lot about the health of individuals by keeping annual reference images like this. We can see the changes in overall body condition from year to year. We can also see, as in this second image, when a whale is pregnant. So we expect to see her with a calf next,” Mclean continued. “If she’s spotted again without one, we know to count that as a birth and a loss in the Sounder population.”
+
By the end of their presentation, SR3’s braided focus of rescue, rehabilitation and research presented its strength. Their vigilance as caretakers and researchers, watching diseases and mortality events ebb and flow with temperature and quality fluctuations, positions them as unsung guardians of Pacific Northwest marine environments. Their proximity and familiarity with local marine animal populations and health concerns prepares them to be impactful when the stakes are higher. Establishing a broad knowledge base on effective treatment in relatively healthy populations of harbor seals, for instance, implies better outcomes if an endangered Guadalupe fur seal were to ever need such care.
SR3’s expertise helps to center the wellness of Northwest marine environments in conservation policy, extending their impacts far beyond the 50 or so harbor seals and the dozen other marine animals they’ll directly care for this year. And, the point is made on SR3’s website, “Marine mammals of the Salish Sea are known to be susceptible to pollution- and environmentally-induced medical conditions; thus, marine mammals can be important sentinels and early warning indicators of public health and environmental change.”
Mclean made the point in her presentation, too: what’s good for the local marine environment is good for the region – both in terms of the overall health of all of its living beings, and, in a region built in part on a robust fishery, in terms of its economics.
In other words, my health and the harbor seal pups’ are inextricably linked. Our fates are intertwined, held in common by the salt water environment that fills the bottom of this mountainous bowl we call home.
