For many months, the seal welfare and monitor team of the Marine Wildlife Management Programme in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront have been trying to rescue a particularly elusive Cape fur seal, which had become entangled with multiple nooses of improperly discarded fishing line.
‘This little seal happened to be particularly stubborn, refusing to rest on the platforms and isolated areas preferred by other seals (and where our team is usually able to reach them), and instead preferring to sleep on top of the bulbous boughs of ships docked in the Port of Cape Town,’ the Two Oceans Aquarium said.
After months of failed rescue attempts, Marine Wildlife Specialist Claire Taylor and her patrol team decided to take direct action and grab the sleeping seal directly.
Taylor is one of our 14 inspirational women in conservation across Africa.
‘Working with the seals in the V&A Waterfront and the Cape Town Harbour is something that we are very passionate about. Sometimes, it is easy to assist the seals that are in distress. Sometimes, it can take months. The suffering of this seal has been haunting and taunting us for nine months!’ said Taylor.
‘Being able to finally get all of the entanglements off this animal is really such a great relief. It does however make me wonder about all of the other animals that are out there, suffering like this one had, without being seen, and without receiving any help,’ she added.
Grabbing seals out of the water is not the team’s usual method – but this situation was quite unusual. As time goes on, nooses of plastic and fishing lines tend to become tighter as they slide lower down the seal’s neck, and the risk of death becomes greater due to infection or snagging on a submerged object.
For the good of the animal, the team needed to act. As is quite clear in the video below, these entanglements had already cut very deeply into the seal’s flesh, and although these resilient animals are able to heal from these wounds surprisingly quickly, the healing process cannot start until the entanglement has been removed.
The seal was tangled in 14 separate pieces of pollution – two of which were so long that they were able to loop around its neck twice. Most of these entanglements were fishing lines, but there was also a mix of other synthetic fibres and even a “disposable” face mask. While this was a particularly bad example of entanglement, even one of these lines has the potential to kill a seal, and the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation’s Marine Wildlife Management Programme have successfully freed many other entangled seals in recent months.
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‘We rely on the public to help us look after our city’s seals – you are the ones who notice the animals in trouble and notify us and other welfare organisations, you are the ones who donate to support our animal welfare work, and you are the ones who help seals by reducing plastic waste at home, cutting up loops and supporting only sustainable fishing companies and sources. The successful rescue of this stubborn little seal equally would not have been possible without the public,’ the Aquarium added.
Pictures: Two Oceans Aquarium
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