Hooded seal found near Rottum
A young hooded seal, born around March, has been found by a fisherman in the Ems.
Hooded seals are born in Northern Polar Regions.
The exhausted animal weighs 40 kilos and has already started eating without help. It will presumably be released next month. We hope to be able to do that in the same way as in the case of other vagrant visitors: Near production platform K3 in the North Sea. The hooded seal will then be on its way back to the area where it belongs. Past reports have taught us that a hooded seal will be able to find its way back to Greenland from there.
Hooded seals often make long journeys; we have even had reports from Madeira. The first report of a hooded seal in Dutch waters was in 1600. An engraving exists of a female hooded seal that was caught and killed off the Werkendam fort in what now is called ‘the Biesbosch’.
The animal that arrived at the SRRC yesterday is the seventeenth hooded seal being rehabilitated in Pieterburen. The last time there was a hooded seal at the SRRC was in 2005.
09-01-2010 Source: SRRC Lenie 't Hart
