Volunteers with the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network late last month rescued a rare northern fur seal in Kachemak Bay.
It's the first such seal seen in Cook Inlet in the history of the Alaska SeaLife Center, and the first northern fur seal to be rehabilitated there, said Tim Lebling, stranding coordinator for the SeaLife Center in Seward.
Photo courtesy of Mark Tobin
Mica, a male juvenile northern fur seal, swims in Kachemak Bay before being rescued by volunteers with the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network. The seal did not swim away from boats. Volunteers monitored the seal for three hours before biologists determined he was sick and needed rehabilitation.
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About 10:45 a.m. July 28, Josh Tobin, marketing director for the Homer News, was fishing in Kachemak Bay off Point Pogibshi when he saw a 30-pound seal bump up against his drifting 19-foot boat. Tobin had worked with his wife, Debbie Tobin, a biology professor at Kachemak Bay Campus, on river otter studies, and realized the seal was not a sea otter.
Like sea otters, northern fur seals float on their back and groom themselves, Lebling said, but they have large front flippers. Unlike harbor seals, fur seals have visible ears. There had been an earlier report of a young Steller sea lion off the Homer Spit, and Lebling said he suspects that was the same animal.
The seal did not dive or swim away, Tobin said. Tobin called Cy St-Amand and LA Holmes, volunteers with the North Gulf Oceanic Society, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and they and other stranding network volunteers went to the seal in another boat. After watching the seal for three hours and consulting with the SeaLife Center and federal biologists, a decision was made to rescue the seal and take it to the center.
Named Mica, the fur seal is a male about a year old.
Lebling said the seal was weak but not emaciated and wasn't eating when it arrived. It's now doing well, although Mica has a high level of parasites, Lebling said.
"We're keeping an eye on that," he said. "Right now we're getting it to a level that it is eating and eating consistently."
A northern fur seal was seen in the Seward harbor in 1998 before the SeaLife Center opened. In Alaska, there are northern fur seal rookeries in Unalaska and the Pribilof Islands, as well as rookeries in California and Russia. Fur seals spend their lives at sea the first two or three years of their lives.
"That's the big mystery: where they go," Lebling said.
At this time of year, breeding fur seals and sub-adults would be at rookeries, including young males. It would be unusual for the season as well as for its range for a northern fur seal to be in Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay, said Peter Boveng, polar ecosystems program leader for the NOAA National Marine Laboratory, Seattle.
"From asking around, this is definitely the first documented sighting of them that I've heard of in seven to eight years," Lebling said.
DNA testing will be done of Mica to find out which rookery he came from. That will determine where he will be released once he's ready for rehabilitation, Lebling said.
"It's possible (Mica) could have drifted up from California," he said.
Six other marine mammals rescued this year from Kachemak Bay are doing well. An elephant seal stranded in the Homer harbor, Sanidine, was released on July 17. Four harbor seals, Marble, Lakoughx-Gravel, Nickel and Coal, are expected to be released this fall, Lebling said.
A sea otter pup, Jasper, is going to the Minnesota Zoo this month. Unlike seals, sea otter pups require constant grooming and feeding from mothers and are 100-percent dependent on their mothers until they're weaned at six months.
"Once they're picked up and brought into captivity and don't have moms, we become the mom," Lebling said. "It's a 24-hour around-the-clock ordeal. There's no way we could pull that off in a six-month period and release them into the wild as independent animals."
Jasper is a good example of why if stranded otters or other marine mammals are seen it's important to not touch them and to call the Stranded Marine Animal Hotline. In Jasper's case, volunteers monitored the pup for hours before consulting with U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists and determining its mother was not coming back.
"That was textbook stranding reporting and observation," Lebling said. "That's what we like to see."
For more information on stranded marine mammals, and for progress reports on Mica and other animals in rehabilitation, visit the Alaska SeaLife Center Web page at www.alaskasealife.org. To report a stranded animal or even a dead animal note its condition and location and call the hotline at (888) 774-7325.
Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.
