Returning home healthy
Saturday, March 13th, another four seals were released in the Dollard. Among them was Hayo, the 150th seal released since January 1st, 2010. Releasing seals is always a happy occasion, but this time it had a worrying edge to it. It seems that the numbers in seal rehab are rising to an all-time high this year. And that is not a good sign.
Since January 1st, the SRRC has released 150 seals, 125 of them were lungworm sufferers among common seals and 25 were young grey seals. Most of the latter had lost their mothers during the nursing period, but there were some lungworm sufferers amongst the grey seals too. That has practically never happened before.
In the same period, 130 common seal lungworm sufferers came in and 46 young grey seals. By comparison, last year we had 50 sick common seals and 34 grey seals in rehab during the same period.
And they just keep coming. We still receive critically ill seals every day.
Naturally, we are glad that most of them can be released back strong and healthy after a couple of months of intensive care. It has been a tough couple of months on our employees though. At a certain point, they were hand-feeding over 100 seals four times a day: 400 dishes of fishmeal, 400 changes of protective clothing...
At the moment it is a bit quieter: we now ‘only’ have 100 seals at the SRRC, of which a large part no longer needs individual care. This gives us the opportunity to get cracking with the planned renovation of the SRRC.
We hope that the new water treatment plant and five new pools shall be ready before the winter. The remaining renovation activities shall be completed during the following year. The water treatment facility will significantly help save water at the centre.
In the meantime, our scientists are busy gaining more knowledge about the developments. They want to find out what is happening in the Wadden Sea and the North Sea. Because it is crystal clear that something is wrong.03-14-2010 Source: SRRC Lenie 't Hart
