Sad News

Beth Daley, Boston Globe, Saturday, March 17, 2001

The hooded seal's soulful black eyes seemed to beg for help. Still, biologist Katie Touhey couldn't grasp why the person who found the animal on Sagamore Beach thought feeding it Oreo cookies was a good idea.

Just as puzzling -- and alarming -- was the man who placed a sick seal in the back seat of his car last month. And then there's the person who thought it was helpful to wrap a blanket around a pup, an animal that manages to stay warm in the frigid Atlantic.

Seal sightings are becoming common along the Massachusetts coast this winter -- the Cape Cod Stranding Network alone received an unprecedented 76 reports of seals on beaches in January, compared with just four in January 2000.

But biologists say that humans are in desperate need of a crash course in the handling of the creatures that many people find too adorable to leave alone.

"The prize for me was when we went to rescue a seal on the South Shore and found a 2-pound bologna sitting next to it," said Greg Early, an associate scientist with the New England Aquarium in Boston. "It's a weird thing that people relate to these animals as companions. They see the big eyes and short head. They are wild, but people see an anthropomorphic Disney character."

The seals are anything but Mickey Mouse with flippers -- they actually have surprisingly sharp teeth that can pass on a particularly nasty joint disease to humans, called seal finger. But as more people see them -- the New England Aquarium has received hundreds of seal sightings on beaches in just the last three weeks -- state and federal officials are starting a public campaign to stop humans from touching or getting too close to the seals.

No one is really sure why so many seals are being spotted on the beach. Most aren't sick or in distress -- the Cape Cod Stranding Network that Touhey directs has had just nine official strandings this January compared to six in the same month last year and four in January 1999. But her agency has been deluged with calls from beachgoers reporting seals.

"We really don't know why people are seeing so many," said Touhey. Food distribution patterns may have changed for some seals, she said, or maybe there are more humans calling in from remote beaches with cell phones. "There could be many reasons," she said.

Once, seals were considered such marine pests that states placed bounties on them for hunters. But that practice ended in the 1960s, and populations slowly began to recover, scientists say. Seals got an extra boost in 1972, when the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed making it a criminal offense to injure or harass the animals.

Now, there are many more harbor and gray seals, and it's common to see harp or hooded seals, which are native to Canada. While the number of harbor seals appears to have increased five-fold since the 1970s, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, no one really knows how many seals are off Massachusetts' coast.

"Seals are a lot like pigeons. They are always around, and you never worry about them," said Early. "Unless the population crashes, it's easy to be blase about their numbers."

Although most people find it hard to believe -- including the dozens of people every month who proudly contact marine biologists to say that they had "returned" a seal to water -- seals spend a huge amount of time resting on land. It's not unusual during the winter to see a seal for as long as two to three days in the same spot.

"They spend almost as much time out of the water as in the sea," said Connie Merigo, director of marine rescue and rehabilitation for the New England Aquarium. "People feel the need to drag the seal back down to the water. But they are there for a reason."

Of course, not all the seals are healthy, and biologists worry about leaving the sick ones on the beach where people can bother them, hasten their death, or make it more stressful. Sometimes, the seals are euthanized when it is clear they are not going to survive.

"Right now, animals are being left on the beach to die because there are few places that have medical care for them," said Sallie Riggs, head of an effort to build a rehabilitation center for marine mammals on Cape Cod Canal. So far, the group has raised $2 million of a needed $7 million for the center, which will provide seals, pilot whales, and other marine mammals sanctuary. "These rescuers out there are like EMTs, but we need a hospital to bring the animals to," said Riggs.

Biologists agree, but until there is such a sanctuary, they are trying to educate the public to care about -- and not cuddle -- the seals. First, they say, if the seal looks healthy, it probably is.

If it's obvious the seal is injured, people should never approach or touch it, biologists say. Seals are not used to humans, and the interaction will only scare them, perhaps even causing them to bite. Also, people should keep their dogs well away from the seals.

"And don't feed the seals," said Gordon Waring, a biologist at the National Marine Fisheries. Earlier this year, he discovered people trying to feed a seal a tuna fish sandwich in Woods Hole. "They don't like tuna fish sandwiches.

And they probably don't like hot dogs either," he said.