Thursday, September 11, 2014

Successful launch from Blue Shutters

Four harbor seals sent home to the open ocean by the Mystic Aquarium
By Will Collette


First, a quick apology to any readers who were alarmed or inconvenienced this morning by my preview posting on today’s seal release at Blue Shutters Beach. I used photos provided by the Aquarium with their news release to illustrate the article; these photos are formatted in a way that triggers virus alerts (even though they are clean). I forgot to re-format them to prevent this. I replaced the photos in the preview article with ones that won’t cause you any problems.

Orion was the first one out
Now, on to today’s big event which was the first time I’ve seen the good people at the Mystic Aquarium sea animal rescue program release four seals at once.

Even though I’ve often said that these seal releases never get old, it was very cool to see the dynamic created by setting all four free at once.

These four harbor seals were rescued in various spots around New England and brought to the Aquarium to be healed and nourished until they were ready to go home. They are all around the same age (3-4 months) and size (between 40 and 48 pounds). The always efficient Mystic folks lined up their carry cages and sprung the doors pretty much at the same time.




Beautiful markings!
As I’ve seen on previous releases, some seals are ready to go and are pawing at the grate as soon as they see the ocean. Others are not so sure about this whole independence thing. But they always go, sometimes quick, sometimes not.

Even though each seal's carrier was labelled with the name the Aquarium staff had bestowed on the seal, after Orion was released and the others came out onto the beach, I lost track of who was whom. Thus, I can attach no names or genders to the four seals. I think the Aquarium should give each seal a name tag for future releases.

This one has a cool bandit's mask. Note the red board. The Aquarium
staff come in force to ensure the crowd's and the seals' safety. They
use the boards to steer the seals and to maintain some separation
between them and the on-lookers.
One seal, Orion, was quick out of the gate and into the water in seconds. Then a pair followed at a brisk pace. But one little one didn’t want to go, or at least wanted some extra time to think about it. 

As I’ve seen in previous releases, the seals in the water usually stick around to encourage the recalcitrant one. This time, it was three seals in the water urging the fourth to get a wiggle on. Maybe he was spooked by the brisk surf and incoming tide.

But they all went to the applause of the surprisingly small, post-Labor Day audience.


The Mystic Aquarium does good work. I can’t find the words to convey how much I admire their sea animal rescue program. Cathy and I joined the Aquarium, largely on the merits of this program. I’d urge you to think about doing it, too.

Some pretty lively surf at Blue Shutters

At the upper far left, you can see the first one to go in (probably Orion, but who knows), waiting for the others. It took some coaxing from the other three to get the little one at the end to commit.