How We Gave Tours About Seals And Marine Environment?

One of the principles of helping wildlife is to spread the word far and wide. As people being residents of the planet Earth, they naturally are the protectors responsible for passing the baton called “the state of planet” to future generations. Raising awareness will surely do the trick, as the sharing mechanism starts enabling you to reach out to a larger audience. Following the same example volunteers (me included) in Seal Rescue Ireland are being trained to give tours to visitors. In my orientation week I read educational materials and followed more experienced volunteers on the tours they were leading, until I felt ready to get up on that stage myself. Anyone visiting SRI can get a tour around. It's free of charge as the centre is donation based. Tours are aimed at sharing vital information concerning seals and enlighten people before they get to see the seals in the centre. They last 15 minutes and encompass all basics and essentials.

What are these essentials?

1. Tour starts inside of the building at the map of Ireland, telling about the story of SRI , mentioning that Ireland has only 2 native species of Seals ( Grey Seals and Common seals), also giving a shout-out to 900 dedicated volunteers (If you live in Ireland, don't hesitate to join as well!) helping to find injured seals and transporting them to the centre.

2. Then we smoothly move to the next stage, telling the difference between Grey Seals and Common Seals. The detectable differences are:

a) Weight - Adult Grey seals can weigh up to 300 kg, while adult Common seals reach only half of it, weighing in the range of 130-150 kg.

b) Appearance - Useful tip, Grey seals look like dogs with their longer Roman noses, parallel shaped nostrils (don't meet at the bottom) and Common seals resemble cats with their round faces and V shaped nostrils (meet at the bottom). Seeing visitors laughing at the dog and cat examples was my favourite part.

c) Pupping season - Pupping seasons for Grey seals are Autumn/ Winter months, for Common seals are Spring/ Summer.

d) Pups - Grey Seal pups are born with white coat on, which is known as lanugo as well. It's fluffy, keeping a pup warm, but every comfort comes with a drawback. In this case, lanugo coat is non-waterproof. In other words, if a pup mistakenly falls into water, the coat'll get heavy and it may drown. Hence, in their first weeks grey seal pups depend on their mothers. Moms feed them with milk and after 1 month she'll leave the pup forever and go back into water to restore her energy by hunting and to mate. Meanwhile, the half of the pup's lanugo has already molted and it has to make a life-changing decision - entering water. Usually, it's hunger that drives them towards this decision. Although they can wait up to 2 weeks gathering courage and molting the rest of their fur. Common Seal pups molt their coats in their mothers womb, so after being born these pups are on the peak of readiness to conquer the world by swimming, hunting and just splashing in water. Non of these, of course, happens without their mother's supervision and assistance. Common seal pups can follow their moms up to 1 year.

3. Later we move to the most eye-catching part of the tour. It's a wall with 6 posters - dedicated to The Problems Seals (and other marine creatures) Face In The Wild and The Ways To Help Them.

a) Plastic Ingestion - In today's reality It's already absurd to ignore the massive turmoil plastic brings about with itself. (This vital topic needs more attention, so I'll go into the details in another "episode" :) )

b) Plastic Entanglement - Well, fishermen aren't being good guys, when they decide to get rid of their fishnets just by throwing them into water. That fishnet will still perform its function (turning into ghost nets) by catching fish and attracting sea creatures as seals, turtles, dolphins. As a result these nothing suspecting animals get caught and stuck among the lines of a fishnet. Which as a result can lead to injuries with lifelong consequences or even an agonising end-of-life.

c) Illnesses - They get sick as well. Seals can have lungworms, tapeworms, seal pox etc. Usually their natural defenses are quite strong to fight it off. Although the rise in the amount of herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers and other harmful substances started to pollute water and thus weaken marine creatures' immune system. These chemicals are usually used in agriculture, which get mixed with soil and eventually enter water causing long- term problems and put even our health in peril.

d) Injuries - Can you believe that nowadays Climate Change plays one of the prime roles in the plummeting population of animals and the increase in injuries they get? Here is an example, Hurricane Ophelia which happened in October 2017 and which I witnessed in person was one of the strongest storms in Ireland happened in 50 years. 2 days in a row SRI's rescue phone wouldn't stop ringing by getting worried calls of good people reporting about injured pups. Yeah, as it was the start of pupping season of Grey seals, these babies experienced their first moments of life in dread and pain. Weak pups were thrown against rocks by strong waves and found in horrible conditions. One of them was Kai, a grey seal pup, found with severe injuries due to the rough storm. He was brought to SRI for further care and only after 3 months he was successfully released back to his natural habitat.

Happy ending, right? Or it's better to say a continuation of his lifelong adventure. :)

e) Emaciation - Remember that viral and heartbreaking photo of an extremely thin polar bear? (Thanks to the veteran NatGeo photographers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier for raising awareness by capturing and sharing those photo-materials).

That's the state of emaciation, dramatic loss of weight, usually due to lack of nutrition. It happens for various reasons all linked one to another, starting from Climate Change, ending with unsustainable fishing practices. With seals the fact of malnutrition is primarily linked to unsustainable fishing. Overfishing drives seals off from the locations they used to hunt and forces them to swim long distances in order to find anything to feed on. Seals have a thick layer of blubber (fat) which provide them with energy at the first stages of food shortage. Unfortunately, not all of them complete their journeys successfully. Brutal competition, fight over territory, lack of food in the new region decrease the odds of surviving.

f) Abandonment - Seal pups are one of the most adorable creatures in the world. But people have to keep in mind that a mother seal will abandon her pup immediately, if she spots even one person standing too close to it on the beach. This part demands to dedicate a whole post to it (at least in 3 languages), as the information it contains has the power to save more pups from being abandoned.

4. Then we show the wall of the seals we currently have in the centre, inviting visitors to go outside and see them (YAY!). First we approach kennels, telling a personal story of each seal in there, after we go to see 4 pools (Nursery, Rock, Physio, Pre-Release). It's the happy place, where the seals in the kennels strove heroically, made exceptional improvements in health and made it to pools.

In a nutshell, I have seen countless of surprised reactions when I was mentioning the problems seals suffer in wilderness, especially, the fact that they're getting abandoned. The happiness I was feeling for giving them even the smallest key to understanding is priceless. Because no sooner had they get informed, a simple day to visit SRI with a so called purpose “just to have a look at seals” will turn into a meaningful, moving moment, a date worth being circled on a calendar.