Maverick Seal From Another Ocean Drops In

Southern California beaches attract all kinds of visitors during the summer.

But this week, a special visitor from out of town--way, way out of town--paid a visit to the Silver Strand beach in Coronado. The appearance of a 275-pound, 6-foot-long hooded seal--member of a species that lives only along the coasts of Greenland and northern Canada--has local marine scientists perplexed.

Since Monday, Sea World officials have had their hands full with the uninvited guest, who snapped at its handlers and turned up its snout at first offerings of Sea World fare.

The park officials could hardly turn it away, however, since it apparently swam 8,000 to 12,000 miles before beaching itself.

“How she got here boggles the mind,” said Jim Antrim, Sea World’s senior curator for marine mammals. “No one has ever heard of one being found on the West Coast of America.”

Hooded seals are distinguishable by their large size, unusual markings and, in males, bulbous noses that have a hooded shape and flare out when the animals are agitated, Antrim said.

Although the 3-year-old female seal has all the telltale characteristics, park officials could hardly believe their eyes when they responded to a telephone call after the animal was sighted by a passer-by around noon Monday.

“I think she probably got here on her own,” Antrim said. “The animal must have been exhausted.”

At first, the seal refused to eat and appeared to have some sort of infection. Since then, it has adjusted to life in California, Antrim said.

“She seems to be in pretty good shape to be so far out of her range,” Antrim said.

Hooded seals, once prized by hunters for their bluish coats, do have a history of wandering. Some have been sighted as far south as Florida and as far east as Portugal. Still, such trips are only 2,000 to 3,000 miles out of the animals’ natural habitat, Antrim said.

To reach the warm Pacific waters, this seal must have swum across the Arctic Ocean, through the Northwest Passage and through the Bering Strait, Antrim said.

“I cannot believe that it swam through the Panama Canal,” Antrim said.

The whole scenario sounded improbable to Gerald Kooyman, a research physiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“I’d say that’s impossible,” Kooyman said when he heard about the park’s visitor. “It’s a remarkable occurrence. It’s a surprise to me.”

Hooded seals are independent by nature, nursing for only four to seven days after birth, Antrim said.

Brent Stewart, a staff scientist at the Sea World Research Institute, speculated that this seal may have forsaken its roots at a very early age.

“This animal is still fairly young,” Stewart said. “There’s a tendency for young seals to wander. It may have been wandering for a couple of years.”

Scientists still don’t fully understand why species of seals generally choose to stay in one particular area, Kooyman said.

“There are no obvious barriers to them,” Kooyman said.

The seal could probably live just as happily in the 70-degree Pacific waters as its now-distant relatives do in 30-degree waters, Stewart said.

At first, some officials speculated that the animal had been captured and released somewhere near the Coronado beach. But Antrim said the seal did not have any of the markings that are usually found on seals that have been transported in pools or cages.

Also, the seal’s initial refusal to eat dead fish and its hostility toward humans indicate that it probably had not dealt with people before, Antrim said.

Where the seal’s travels will take it next is unclear. Sea World officials plan to keep it for about two months to make sure it’s in good health. Then the National Marine Fisheries Service will decide its fate.

“It’s too early in the rehab process to make a decision,” said Joe Cordaro, a wildlife biologist in the Los Angeles office of the Marine Fisheries Service. “We’re still in shock that it happened, period.” However, Cordaro said it seemed likely that federal officials would elect to relocate the seal somewhere in the waters around Alaska.

Meanwhile, Sea World handlers have given the adventurous hooded seal a name: Robin, after the swashbuckling vagabond from Nottingham Forest.