NOS News•today, 12:38•Amended today, 2:40 PM
In recent months, a record number of seals have been cared for in the three major seal centers in the Netherlands. This year alone, 38 animals were brought to shelters Pieterburen, A Seal and Ecomare. There were 40 in all of 2023.
There are several possible causes for the sudden increase, but stranding coordinator Emmy Venema from Pieterburen is particularly concerned about the high number of entanglements. “That will also increase considerably this year.”
She said most of the animals being brought in now are young gray seals that have become entangled in nets. She also encounters many animals that suffer from litter.
This seal was found on Saturday with a rope around its neck; Now things are better again:
Injured seal with rope around its neck is now doing well in the shelter
The most distressing case this year was a seal with a nylon thread around its neck and a flipper. “We can often treat such a thread in the neck because there is a lot of fat there. It is not around the flipper. That is why we had to put this seal to sleep.”
This year, Pieterburen employees also came across a potato bag, a Frisbee, a plastic barrel lid and a T-shirt in which the seals had become entangled.
There is no single clear cause for the increase in the number of entanglements. According to Pieterburen, this is mainly due to the large amount of litter in the sea, which has become loose from the seabed due to the stormy weather of recent times.
According to seal researcher Sophie Brasseur of Wageningen University, a combination of several causes is logical. For example, the North Sea has been used more intensively for shipping and wind turbines in recent years.
The changes in and at sea could have an effect on the seal, because there is simply less space for the animals. The common seal in particular seems to be affected by this.
Brasseur sees no indications of diseases among the seal population, which could in turn have an effect on a change in behavior and the population. “But we haven’t done proper research into that yet, so that still needs to be done.”
The development towards fewer common seals and the increase in the number of entanglements are worrying experts, because if the population declines, this will also have consequences for our ecosystem.
“The seal is one of the largest predators,” says researcher Brasseur. “It eats all kinds of fish that would otherwise not be eaten. It also has no natural enemies. So they ensure balance in the system.”
Remote places
The three large shelters are doing everything they can to maintain the seal population, says Emmy Venema. She thinks that the actual number of seals that become entangled is much higher, because they are now dependent on reports made by people. The seals that lie on sandbanks in remote places are not noticed.
For this reason, Pieterburen, Ecomare and A Seal founded the so-called Seal Response Team two years ago. The team, doctors and caretakers go in a boat to look for stranded and entangled seals on the sandbanks.
Due to a lack of equipment and money, medical devices and other items are borrowed. The three shelters hope to raise their own supplies through crowdfunding. “So that we can help the weak and stranded animals as best as possible,” says Venema.
