Yesterday around four o’clock we got a call from Salsbury Cove about a dead seal pup. Rosie, the main emergency mammal responder, was relieved to hear that it was dead due to Maine’s animal rehabilitation center’s recent closing. Sean Todd, the director of Allied Whale said that now if they get calls about seals and other marine wildlife there is virtually nothing they can do to benefit them besides euthanizing them. They simply don’t have the money to send the animals to the closest rehabilitation center, which is in Connecticut I believe. Personally the fact that they are so willing just to euthanize the animals makes me a little uncomfortable but I guess it is the easiest solution to the problem. Although I don’t understand why they couldn’t just release the animals back into the wild and let nature take its course.
So today we watched Rosie and Laura and a few students perform a seal necropsy. It’s actually really important for the team to do necropsies when they have the chance because it not only shows us how that animal died but it also shows if outside matters are effecting the population of a certain species which could trickle down and effect us as well. An example of this would be like chemicals poisoning fish, which then poison the seals first but will eventually poison us as well so it’s important to take action.
~Bre
**********
Today was an eventful day, to say the least. We started off in the morning, as Bre said, observing the seal pup necropsy. Although it was sad, it was an incredible experience. I'm not quite sure how to begin describing the scene, and I'm not too keen on posting a picture because I'm figuring nobody's too enthusiastic about seeing it, but basically it was fairly comparable to the second phase of a Law and Order SVU opening scene. Phase 1, random person encounters dead body: Phase 2, the police force shows up taking pictures and documenting things they see on the body. They did the whole, write things on paper and hold it up to the body and photograph it, for their own research purposes and so they can send their information to NOAA fisheries (the organization that funds their research).
For a while, I got to hold the clipboard and write down whatever Laura, the one performing the procedure, called out so needless to say I felt very important. The cause of death of the female pup was essentially unknown, however, they did locate three small abrasions and puncture wounds around the head and neck area, as well as an abscess around the size of a ping pong ball in the lateral neck. They speculated that since the pup was so young (approx. 2 weeks) the immune system, which should have been working overtime to develop, was fighting to rid of the likely pre-natal abscess, leaving it even more vulnerable to other bacterial infections. :(
On a lighter note though, this afternoon Bre and I got to go out and do some field research on this nature cruise, which is generally a commercial boat trip meant for tourists, but our mentor wants to get us out on a few of those trips to record seal and bird of prey populations in the Bar Harbor area for a friend of hers and fellow researcher. So yes, we saw our first live seals. And by seals I mean we counted around 120 seals on this tiny island equivalent to the length of two football fields. It was incredible. Also as we passed a different island we caught sight of two Bald Eagles, which as also amazing, and I furthermore got the song "Im Proud to Be an American" stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
And to top off an eventful day, Bre and I had a very ~romantic~ and picturesque evening watching the sunset on Acadia National Park's acclaimed Cadillac Mountain, and did yoga poses for this random photographer so keep your eyes open while checking out at Giant Eagle for us on the next cover of National Geographic!!!!!
~Lindsay
No comments:
Post a Comment