Soon after the Marine Mammal Medic course in January Caroline arranged for us to go to our local seal rescue sanctuary in Hunstanton, Norfolk.  This was arranged as a working holiday for my 40th birthday.

We arrived at the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary early on Saturday morning to be met by a jubilant Kieran Copeland.  “Sally has had her pup overnight, come and look”.  He led us through to the main seal enclosure and there we saw Sally and Mando’s new seal pup.  She was only hours old and looked funny as she tried to haul herself out of the water to where Mum was lying.
 
 

Sally and Mando with their new pup

Kieran then showed us through to the seal hospital where we met the nine pups that were in temporary residence.  We both immediately fell in love with Popadom.  She was just one day old when found on Snettisham beach having been separated from her mother by bad weather.  She is to be kept in the hospital unit until she is big enough to be transferred to the main pool and then eventually released back into the wild.  On her arrival she was fed by tube every 4 hours on a milk substitute.  When she was 21 days old she was weaned onto fish.  At first these had to be force fed to her until eventually she started to feed on her own.  Kieran explained that while there we would be responsible for helping to feed the nine pups at regular intervals.  This would involve feeding milk substitute by tube and force feeding fish by hand.  Our other jobs included cleaning the pens out and taking the pups temperatures.  We were soon shown how to complete these tasks by two of the permanent staff, Christine and Zoe.
 
 

Popadom

At 2pm Kieran called us out of the hospital for a real seal rescue.  A family out walking their dog on Weybourne beach had found a young pup.  The centre was short of staff and were we up for the rescue, solo?  You bet we were.  We grabbed a sky crate used for transporting dogs and off we went.  Not knowing the area at all we followed our atlas to the rough area then rang Mark who had found the pup to guide us in.  Weybourne beach is a long shingle bank and the pup was about 500 yards from the car park.  Apparently the family had kept their distance from the seal hoping it’s mother would return but after 4 hours she still had not returned and the young pup was being worried by seagulls.  The sun was shining and the temperature was in the 30’s so the poor pup was literally cooking.  Remembering our BDMLR training Caroline expertly threw a towel over the seal, and restrained it so we could begin a proper examination.  It was a female, only about 5 days old and in terrible shape.  She was not nicely rounded but had a thin scraggy neck and distinct hips, sure signs of being underweight.  She had lost her left eye and had a huge lesion on her left flank; both probably caused by the gulls.  We put her into the crate and whilst I drove back to the sanctuary Caroline rang Kieran to appraise him of the situation.  He got the ball rolling, as there was no room left at the hospital he contacted the RSPCA wildlife centre at East Winch.  On arrival back at the centre Kieran cast his expert eye over the pup, the wounds that the pup had sustained were quite serious and an operation was going to be necessary.  The RSPCA have a very good working relationship with the seal sanctuary but due to commitments they were unable to attend for a couple of hours.  The pups temperature had now reached 40.1 º C and was critical.  We rigged up a holding tank and part filled it with water to try and get her temperature down.  Kieran administered some drugs and Zoe gave her some zoolite to try and re-hydrate her while we waited for the RSPCA.  Alison, a seal expert from the RSPCA, arrived and took the pup off to their wildlife hospital.  Apparently the pups temperature shot up during her transfer to East Winch, they again used water to cool her down but this time her temperature plummeted and she sadly died.
Was it worth all the effort – Yes, this was far more humane than leaving her to cook on a beach being pecked to death by seagulls.
This was our first ever rescue and the BDMLR course and our extra instruction from the Seal Sanctuary had served us well.
 
 

Very skinny pup on the beach	In the crate waiting to go
In the holding tank trying to cool down	Waiting for the RSPCA

Anyway back to our week in the hospital.  The pups are all named after an Indian dish: -
 

Balti 1 day old when he was found on Heacham beach on 27/6/02, he had to be tube fed milk.	Naan 4 days old when he was found on Hunstanton beach on 3/7/02, he had to be tube fed milk.
Madras (foreground)14 days old when he was found on Snettisham beach on 4/7/02, he had to be tube fed milk and whole fish.	Dhansak was 2 days old when he was found on Hunstanton beach on 20/6/02, he had to be fed whole fish.
Bhaji (foreground) 7 days old when he was found on Thornham beach on 22/6/02, he had to be tube fed milk and whole fish	Jalfrezi 4 days old when he was found on Hunstanton beach on 29/6/02, he had to be tube fed milk and whole fish.
Vindaloo (foreground) 7 days old when she was found on Snettisham beach on 4/7/02, she had to be tube fed milk.	Popadom 1 day old when she was found on Snettisham beach on the 4/6/02 she was on fish and you had to help her by directing the fish down her throat.  On the day we left she had just learned to chase the dead fish around her pen and swallow them herself

All of these pups will be tagged then returned to the wild when they are old enough to fend for themselves.

We fed all of them with milk or fish and managed to not get bitten badly.  In between feeds Caroline made up the food for their next feed whilst I helped to build the new penguin enclosure.  This was back breaking work in the sunshine but it was good to see all of the staff mucking in when they could.

If you are interested in spending a few days at the Hunstanton Sea Life Centre then drop me an e-mail and Caroline will try and arrange it.  Obviously this is only open to people that have completed the BDMLR Marine Mammal Medic course.