A young harbour seal is recovering at the Vancouver Aquarium after being shot in the face with birdshot and turning up emaciated on Kitsilano beach.
The female seal, dubbed Jessica Seal, is estimated to be less than a year old and is the fifth in a string of animals admitted to the aquarium's rescue centre suffering shooting injuries.
"The person who did this would have known they wouldn’t kill her with birdshot. It was intended to hurt her, and it did," said Dr. Martin Haulena, the aquarium's head veterinarian. "The conflict on the water between humans and seals is not new - they want some of the same fish. I do worry people now feel more comfortable taking aim because they’ve been hearing seals are the bad guys, and they’re not."
The pinniped was found on Feb. 18 with its wounds already healing over.
"I can tell you that she's been suffering for several weeks, and we don't know if she's going to recover her eyesight enough to be released," Haulena said.
In February, a local group proposed developing a commercial seal hunting industry on the West Coast – arguing it would help restore balance among marine life.
Haulena and Ocean Wise staff took aim at what they call misconceptions about the size of the seal population off Vancouver's coast and in the Strait of Georgia.
"A cull of seals and sea lions is not likely to do anything to improve salmon stocks," said Dr. Peter Ross, the vice president of research at Ocean Wise, in a statement. "Declining salmon abundance is the result of a complex variety of factors, and is not the result of predation by pinnipeds."
If you see a marine mammal that you believe is in distress: stay back, keep people and pets away, call the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre at 604-258- 7325, or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans hotline at 1-800-465-4336.
