The Seattle Times’ environmental writer, Lynda Mapes, has a feature story about the latest tracking study being done on harbor seal pups in the San Juan Islands. Tracking devices are being secured on pups that have been rehabilitated to see how they survive once released back into the wild. The Sea Doc Society’s Harbor Seal Rehabilitation Study will compare the movements and survival rates of 10 rehabbed pups versus 10 wild-weaned pups. Read the Times article here.

A similar study is being conducted in South Puget Sound, where 21 wild pups have been fitted with radio transmitters. Mortality rates of pups have increased somewhat in our area and biologists hope that these devices will shed light on the causes. The movements of these pups will be tracked throughout the winter. The transmitters are glued on and are shed when the pups molt their first coat. Seals molt every year post pupping season. Yesterday, we had a pup on our shore (photo at left by SS volunteer David Hutchinson) who was tagged during captures as part of long-term harbor seal research study in the region. This pup was not fitted with a transmitter because he had infected puncture wounds on his rear flippers. The biologists, however, tagged the pup with a blue id tag (indicating sex as male) and flushed and cleaned the wounds with an iodine solution. When our volunteer noticed the tag, we phoned WDFW Marine Mammal Investigations to see if the pup was one of our South Sound rookery pups. Sure enough, the pup was tagged in South Puget Sound on October 7th and the biologist was happy to hear that the pup has survived thus far. The wounds are still infected, but the pup was resting in an inaccessible area. We will keep an eye out for this beautiful pup.

UPDATE: This pup has been named ET by our volunteers because of the similarity to the movie character and also because this pup, too, has travelled so far from home.

Tags: ET