Sea lion saved from packing material cutting its neck, Pacific Northwest rescuers say
Wildlife rescuers responded to a distressing scene last week in the Salish Sea between Canada’s Vancouver Island and Washington state.
A male Steller sea lion at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve was living with “a plastic packing band wrapped tightly around its neck,” according to a blog post Monday from the SeaDoc Society, one of the rescue groups. The piece of litter had cut two inches into the 1,000-pound marine mammal’s neck — leaving a wound deep and severe enough to suggest the strap had been digging into the animal’s flesh for a while, rescuers said.
But the plan to remove the band from the sea lion wasn’t simple: It required an air-powered dart armed with sedatives to immobilize the animal, rescuers said.
“Race Rocks can present some logistical challenges with terrain and strong currents, and in this case, the animal was spotted in an area that was difficult to access,” the SeaDoc rescuers wrote. “It took several hours of jockeying positions, on land and from the water, before (a veterinarian) was able to successfully dart the sea lion.”
After it was struck and immobilized, the animal made its way into the water, where the team tracked it down, assessed the injury and removed the plastic, rescuers said.
“Team members also tagged the sea lion’s flippers, so if there are further reports about it — which often occurs because scarring from the entanglement is mistaken for the entanglement itself — rescuers will be able to identify this particular animal,” rescuers said.
Steller sea lions are a protected species in Canada and can be found from the California coast up to the Bering Strait, as well as along coasts in Asia and Japan, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
The SeaDoc Society worked with Vancouver Aquarium’s marine mammal rescue staff and officers from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to get the job done, the SeaDoc Society said.
Rescuers said they found the injured animal while “responding to reports of at least one Steller sea lion and one California sea lion seen entangled in plastic.”
Rescuers said that recently “B.C. surveys have documented hundreds of entangled sea lions, with some of the worst plastic offenders being ghost gear, including nets and ropes, and discarded trash such as the plastic packing bands used in packaging and shipping, which ensnare animals.”
Had the animal not been rescued from the plastic, the entanglement could have been deadly: Animals keep growing even as the litter constricts their bodies, rescuers said.
This story was originally published September 24, 2019 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Sea lion saved from packing material cutting its neck, Pacific Northwest rescuers say."
