"Mum! mum!"
Zoe rushed into the float house. "You HAVE to come outside!"
I followed her through the door onto our dock, aware that I was about to see something that inspired more urgency and excitement than her newest diving trick.
She crouched in rapt awe beside a dark wrinkly sleeve on the float logs. It shifted and turned toward me - dark fur shone speckled grey in the sun. The infant harbour seal fixed my eyes with its own liquid black gaze and cried out, "Maa! maa!"

Rules flashed through my mind: don't touch it! it will be abandoned if we do! mother seals leave their babies alone while they forage!

It shuffled toward us. "maa!" It pressed its muzzle against Zoe's foot and looked up. A week-old baby seal with vestigial umbilical cord is about the cutest, most beseeching thing you can imagine. What would YOU do?

Our boat motor broke down last week; we live boat access and had arranged rides to and from home in advance with other water-dwellers. Nobody was coming until the following afternoon. My cell phone had at best a 1/2 hour of battery time left in it to learn as much as I could about infant seals and their needs, and the rescue process should it come to that. No internet either. I felt helpless and ignorant. Our food stores: rice and beans, nuts and apples, would obviously fail to fulfill this newborn seal's requirements.

I made choices over the next 24 hours that I need to live with. I want to inform other islanders about your options, if similar decisions should arise for you - and they very well may. This year there are unprecedented numbers of abandoned seal pups being found on Cortes shorelines, five so far to my count, and the rehabilitation facilities on Salt Spring and at the Vancouver Aquarium are dealing with double the number of infant rescues so far than last year - and it's just the end of July, with one month of pupping season to go.

In last week's Tideline, Shanaya wrote movingly about her own seal rescue experience, and the difficult moral dilemmas that present themselves in this situation. The Vancouver Aquarium, which she contacted first, suggested she attempt to rehydrate the infant seal before transport ... with a water and apple juice mixture.

Provincial rescue organizations are committed to the intake, rehabilitation, and eventual wild release of these seals. They control this process: they are legally bound to withhold information from lay people around what, how, how much, and how often to feed the babies. It is also against DFO regulations for laypeople to interact with and nurture wild animals. That being said, I am still interested in collecting and sharing stories from local people, around your own successes and failures with wild animal rescue and interventions. This way we can at least know how to provide the most effective, and informed, interim care to hurt and starving creatures, when they are entrusted to us - given our geographical distance from a quickly accessible, authorized rescue facility.

Abandoned seal babies are thin, with a visible "neck" and a telltale wrinkled look. At this point your seal will be dehydrated, and at risk of renal failure and death. The bones of our little seal were visible through its skin: it was with a sense of kinship and wonder that we traced the evolution of a hidden leg, from hipbone, to knee, to ankle, on down to its wee flipper-feet.
Healthy seal pups, on the other paw, are fat and sleek, gaining a 1/2 kilo a day in weight from their mama's uniquely rich milk. Seal milk has the highest fat content of any mammal; it is also high in protein. Seal babies are lactose intolerant - a quantity of cow's milk will harm them. The closest thing to mother's milk would be a slurry of herring and fish oil; there is a fat, protein and vitamin-rich product called MultiMilk that some seal rescue centres use, that is designed for lactose intolerant mammal babies. Seals may or may not accept a bottle; a Quadra resident found that a bottle nipple pushed through a small piece of cardboard, then pressed against the baby's nose, seemed to stimulate sucking. Like a mama seal's body... perhaps the muzzle pressing against the mother sets off a let-down reflex that ejects milk?
The Vancouver Rescue Centre told me when I called that mothers will return to their babies within 8-12 hours, and to initiate rescue procedures after this time has elapsed. The SaltSpring rescue centre scorns the notion that mothers leave the babies for days on end... it is OKAY to follow your impulse to help a distressed baby seal. You will know if the seal you find is fat, happy and waiting... or a tiny bag of bones, trailing you across the beach, rasping at you imploringly.

I called Shanaya and she gave me the number of the Merville facility: Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society . This is the initial intake spot for island rescues. They will arrange pickup for the animal in Heriot Bay. The terrified baby, now in a large plastic "tote" and perishing from anxiety, is driven across Quadra Island and, we discovered to our surprise, bunged on the ferry alone for the next leg of the journey. We chose to accompany our seal, and carried it ourselves to the next driver in Campbell River.
Upon arrival in Merville, the workers assess the animal's condition, stabilize it, then send it, if it's a marine mammal, to one of two facilities: the Island Wildlife Natural Care Centre on Salt Spring, or the Marine Mammal Rescue and Rehabilitation Program the the Vancouver Aquarium.

In the ferry parking lot at Campbell River the seal was tube fed for the first time. Zoe and I watched as the struggling seal was wrapped in towels and immobilized. The tube was pushed into its mouth and forced in - a long way - and two large syringes of clear liquid (water?) were injected. It was gagging and spewing, its raspy voice rising to a frantic scream. Sometimes healing can hurt, I reassured myself; I felt deeply troubled nonetheless. The baby was placed in a dog kennel in the back of the van, and driven away. Before the van doors closed, I noticed its head begin to jerk rythmically in a spasmodic tic that had not been there before. Choices.

Zoe and I reassured each other: sending a starving seal away from its familiar home is a painful decision. We indulged in fantastic and hopeful images around its reception in Vancouver: a cosy puppy pool, and other frisky foundlings to play with! This was wilful denial of the obvious fact that lengthy quarantine would be in effect. Once at the rescue facility the baby seals are "tubed" several times a day ; they are routinely weighed and blood is extracted to check for disease. The infant seals spend a lot of time alone, in empty sterile plastic high-walled tubs, where they will live for thirty days before graduating to the baby pool... where things look up at last, in the company of other babies, fish to eat and a place to swim.

Once I could access the Internet I checked out the facilities. The SaltSpring facility is different in philosophy and feel. The babies are quarantined from others for only 21 days... they are also tube fed, but in addition they are offered homeopathy and physical therapy. The workers withdraw the nurturing, and I would argue, healing, aspect of human contact only at the end, when the seals are preparing for wild release as adolescents in early autumn. The appearance of the SaltSpring facility is homelike and inviting. They do not believe in the exhibit of wild animals , or their exploitation for scientific purposes, and when I called them this morning they said it is possible to "reserve" spots with them - so call them FIRST, BEFORE Merville, or your little one may be flown to Vancouver - where it will be given a good shot at survival, to be sure - but with a different spiritual environment and "flavor."
We feel blessed to have been visited by this little being. It chose to stay at our house, drifting about in the water and clambering onto the float logs when it felt like company or a nap. Other boaters had seen it a couple of days before on the nearby shore, crying. With the best of intentions, they followed the rules to leave it alone. We sang to it; we loved it. We shooed away the vulture that circled low over our house, eyeing the dark teardrop of its weakening body.
We are allowed to visit the Vancouver Aquarium and, as finders, witness its progress. If we are very lucky we may be allowed to participate in the seal's wild-release ceremony. It is seal pup "number #80".
I can only hope that for these seals, once they are free, the memory of forced isolation in institutional care will recede as in a bad dream... they will surely never trust humans again, and some would argue this is as it should be.
If in your heart you feel that the little one before you is not going to make it, or if you struggle with the idea of prolonged, traumatic emergency intervention... take comfort that its last moments will be passed at home, in the embrace of the great salt sea, with the sound of wheeling gulls and the delicate touch of sunshine and moon jellies. And its soul's final record of human beings will be a memory of kindness and quiet presence.

Island Wildlife Natural Care Centre
Salt Spring Island
250 - 537 - 0777

Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society
Merville
250 - 337 - 2021

Marine Mammal Rescue and Rehabilitation Program
Vancouver Aquarium
604 - 258 - SEAL