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MOSSEL BAY NEWS - The Stranded Marine Animal Rescue Team (S.M.A.R.T.) is delighted that a stranded seal it attended to has progressed well and is ready to return to Antarctica.
Most S.M.A.R.T. volunteers are in the Mossel Bay area, but the team operates throughout the Garden Route.
The beautiful, pale crabeater seal, later named Pearl, was thin, with her mouth full of sand, when S.M.A.R.T. got to her on a Wilderness beach in May.
Now, two months later Pearl is fat and flourishing after being rehabilitated at Bayworld in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth).
S.M.A.R.T. committee member and volunteer Val Marsh says: "It’s extremely rewarding to see how well Pearl has progressed. Success stories like this make every minute of our volunteers' monitoring animals in wind, rain, cold or the hot sun worthwhile."
Dr Greg Hofmeyr, curator of the marine mammal collection at Bayworld, says: "We rushed out there as soon as we could to get the seal.
"She was on the sand, fast asleep and ignoring people."
Photo gallery: Our girl, Pearl
Not many people
Hofmeyr points out there are not many people in Antarctica, so crabeater seals arriving in South Africa probably think people are oversized penguins and are not afraid of them.
It's been an unusual year for crabeater seals; Pearl, who was given her name at Bayworld, was number three to strand in South Africa.
"They're not under threat. There's a large population. We've had 30 of them wash up before in the last 60 years," Hofmeyr says.
"I have no clear idea why three washed up this year. The reason might be oceanographic changes."
Hofmeyr says crabeater seals found on the South African coast do not usually survive. "Either they've been shot or injured by people or they swallow too much sand. They are suction feeders. They do not eat crab, but krill in the water around Antarctica or from the ice."
Krill are similar to shrimp.
"Crabeater seals suck out organisms from the ice and they try to do the same when they land on the beach in South Africa, suctioning up lots of sand, thinking it is ice. The sand gets compacted in their stomachs. It can't pass through and usually it kills them."
There is extremely little sand at ice-packed Antarctica.
Eating fish
At Bayworld, where Pearl has been eating fish, the sand passed out of Pearl's digestive tract.
Hofmeyr says: "Within the next two weeks, in good weather, we will take her on a boat and release her far enough offshore, so she can swim south." Hofmeyr notes that the Agulhas Current which hugs the coast further north, is directed offshore and south at Gqeberha.
"We will put Pearl into the current. That has worked for previous seal releases. Typically the seals move south by about 200km a day."
Pearl is probably about 10 months old.
Bayworld will be attaching a satellite tag to her head, which will transmit her location by satellite regularly. Hofmeyr says: "We use a marine epoxy-type glue. We will brush up the fur on her head and attach it. Seals moult once a year, so she will only carry the tag for a maximum of a year, but it will mean 12 months of valuable data for us."
If you see any stranded marine animal, call S.M.A.R.T. (072 227 4715). "The team is vitally important as a first point of contact on the Garden Route," says Hofmeyr, commending its work.
Bayworld also has a hotline: to report stranded whales, dolphins and seals, call 071 724 2122.
The seal was found, thin and ill, on the sand at Wilderness. Photo: Dr Greg Hofmeyr
BEFORE: Pearl was thin and ill. AFTER: She regained weight at Bayworld. Photo: Leigh-Anne Smit
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