Bayworld to release rehabilitated seals back in ocean

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

Bayworld in Port Elizabeth will be releasing two rehabilitated seals back into the ocean on Wednesday.

Bayworld's Greg Hofmeyer says one of the animals, a sub-Antarctic fur seal named Bokkie, will be fitted with a satellite tracking device.

Bokkie was found in the garden of a home in Boknestrand in June and brought to Bayworld for rehabilitation.

Hofmeyer says because of the cost, the other seal Polly, who was found in Plettenberg Bay, will only be fitted with a small plastic tag for recognition if she returns to Eastern Cape shores.

Weather permitting, the two seals will be taken out from the Noordhook ski boat club on Wednesday, about 40 nautical miles south where they will be released close to the Continental shelf.

Hofmeyer told Algoa FM News this afternoon that only the one seal will be fitted with the satellite tracker as it costs around R20 000 a piece.

"We have Cape Fur seals along the South African coast but every Winter we also get a number of sub-Antarctic fur seals. These are animals that come from the Southern Ocean where they breed, but every year we get about eight of them on the shores of the Eastern Cape.

"Most of them are fine and we usually leave them on the beaches where they, the go back to sea. Sometime these animals are starving or have injuries and we take them in here at Bayworld and we feed them and look after the injuries. Then we tag them and we release them."

"But, the tags that we give them are small plastic tags and frequently we don't ever see them again so we not really sure how well they're doing."

"So, what we want to do now is take this adult female that got here at Bayworld and release her back into the ocean. She came ashore at Boknestrand and was found in somebody's garden. She climbed up, walked across the beach up an embankment and into his garden (before coming) through to Bayworld."

"The guy then asked us to call her Bokkie."

"What we are going to do is to fit a satellite tag to her. We attach that to her back, we glue it to her fur using a marine epoxy and she's going to carry that until her next moult in about February. So, for the next seven months or so while she's at sea she will be transmitting information via satellite to us so that we can follow her diving behaviour and also location at sea. And what this will do is give us an idea of how well she is gonna survive and where she's going to go."

"And, we can use this to assess whether, you know, what we are doing in feeding up these seals, returning them to sea, whether this is a good idea or not. We've chosen Port Elizabeth as a place to release these animals because Cape Town is too close to the Benguela current, we don't want them to be swept up in that towards Namibia and Durban is too hot.