Rescued seal shuffles its way back to the wild

MOUNT DESERT – It may not quite amount to empty nest syndrome, but a Bar Harbor environmental research group reached a milestone Monday, with a little help from Morris.

Morris, a gray seal found abandoned in Bass Harbor when he was only a few days old, became the first seal ever returned by Allied Whale to the wild when he shuffled his way out of an animal carrier and into Seal Harbor shortly after 1 p.m.

A couple of dozen people, many of them College of the Atlantic students and marine mammal researchers who helped rescue and care for the seal, stood on the snowy beach as the animal, marked with a temporary ID tag on its forehead, crawled into the water and swam away.

Allied Whale, founded in 1972 at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, each year responds to more than 100 reports of sick or stranded seals in eastern Maine, according to Allied Whale research associate Rosemary Seton. Because Allied Whale does not have a rehabilitation facility, the seals it has rescued have been nursed back to health and then released by other agencies, she said.

Morris recuperated in southern Maine but was brought back to Mount Desert Island because he had been rescued here and was strong enough to make the trip, she said.

The seal, named after the Bass Harbor yacht company where he was found, was undernourished when it was rescued and still had the fluffy white fur, or lanugo, common to seal infants, according to Seton. He apparently had been abandoned by his mother, but researchers do not know why.

“She might have died. She might have been shot. Who knows?” Seton said. “This fella was only 4 or 5 days old.”

After being picked up by COA researchers and observed overnight by Trenton veterinarian Kathleen Prunier, the seal was taken to Marine Animal Lifeline, a Westbrook agency that responds to stranded seal reports between New Hampshire and Rockland. Last year, the agency nursed 104 sick or malnourished seals back to health, according to MAL researchers.

On Monday, Morris did not seem to be in a great hurry to leave his rescuers behind. After pushing his way out of an animal carrier, he crawled back and forth on the Seal Harbor beach several times, trying to decide which way to go. One researcher blocked the seal’s path with a large board when he tried to retreat toward a nearby road.

Finally, after a few long looks at the people around him, Morris belly-flopped his way into the harbor, briskly swimming away as he slipped beneath the waves.