4 December 2005 Morning Stroll on the Beach

 

Morning All Seal Supporters,

The wind blew 30 knots last night, with the high tide at 0454. I decided to take a morning stroll along a public beach, opposite a Seal Colony a few kilometers offshore. I was hoping to find at least one alive washed ashore baby seal pup. Instead all I found was sad death and 12 lifeless seal pups. Every single baby seal pup found, had, had its eyes pecked out by seabirds. As the pup starts to starve and grows weaker, the seabirds sense this inactivity, and peck away at the shiniest parts, the black eye-balls. Most of these pups were clearly underweight, indicating once again their reason for death - starvation. The below pictures, are just what has washed ashore in the last 24-hours along a 4 kilometer stretch of beach. Each morning refuse workers from the City Council are up early at 7 am to remove the dead pups, which are then discarded on Council Rubbish dumps. I left my card with one of the driver's of the refuse truck, and offered a reward for any alive baby seal pups found, "Oh - there is many, we normally just chase these babies back into the sea".

What madness I thought to myself. Here a tiny protected baby seal gets swept off his tiny awash rock in the middle of the night, terrified he somehow swims the gauntlet of patrolling Great White Sharks, and finally barely makes it to shore a few kilometers away, only to be chased back into the sea to die, instead of a helping, caring hand being offered. Many more will simply drown, and sink to the bottom, their numbers forever unknown.

For The Seals
Francois Hugo - Seal Alert-SA