Seal pup rescued from beach
Published: August 7, 2007
Canada — A seal pup stranded along the shores of Campbell River Sunday has been rescued and flown to the Vancouver Aquarium for urgent rehabilitation.
The male pup, estimated to be about 10 days old, was first spotted at about 7 a.m. Saturday by a man walking his dog. David Ratson, 60, left it there, hoping it would make its way back into the ocean when the tide came in.
“Sunday morning I walked the dog there again and it was in the exact same spot,” he said. “The high tide had come up to where it was, and it was still lying in a little nest of seaweed.”
Ratson returned with a laundry basket and a towel to move the seal pup, not wanting to leave it in the sun for another day. Temperatures hit 27 degrees in the area on the weekend.
“When I went back I saw seagulls circling around the pup,” he said. “They could’ve landed and pecked its eyes out if I had been an hour longer.”
Mary Jane Birch of the Mountain Air Avian Rescue Society, which made arrangements to get the seal flown to Vancouver, said it was definitely in troubled health. Birch said the Vancouver Aquarium has harboured 80 seal pups this year. The pups are brought up to a desirable weight and taught to catch fish before being released into the wild.
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