MYSTIC, Conn. – Mystic Aquarium on Wednesday began caring for 21 stranded seals that had to be removed from a marine mammal facility in Maine that lost its federal authorization to rescue and rehabilitate stranded seals.

“This is the first time we’ve received this many,” said David Labbe, a spokesman for Mystic Aquarium, which has been rehabilitating seals for 30 years.

The aquarium usually cares for about 20 seals a year, he said. The newest group, which arrived just after midnight, includes 15 harp seals, five gray seals and one hooded seal, and are a combination of young and adult animals.

The seals arrived a day after the National Marine Fisheries Service on Tuesday pulled the plug on the Marine Animal Lifeline facility in Westbrook, Maine, New England’s largest seal rescue and rehabilitation organization. The fisheries service said approximately 80 seals were released without appropriate testing to ensure they were not a danger to other wildlife.

The primary concern is the presence of a pathogen known to cause a highly contagious distemperlike illness in seals. Outbreaks of the virus in European seal populations killed 18,000 seals in 1998 and 22,000 seals in 2002.

Labbe said Mystic Aquarium has two 40-foot rehabilitation pools, offering plenty of room for stranded seals. About seven are well enough to be released soon. Several others, still on medication, are available for public viewing in the aquarium’s seal rescue clinic.