Cape Cod Standing Network stepped back after helping a beached gray seal pup.
(Boston Globe Photo / Vincent Dewitt )
OSTERVILLE - The gray seal pup lolled in the winter sun on a private beach, white twine twisted around its neck.
Nearby, four marine mammal rescuers from the Cape Cod Stranding Network got ready. As they surrounded the animal, one threw a towel over the pup's bewildered black eyes, then straddled its 3-foot-long body to hold its flippers still. Another snipped the twine and applied a disinfectant to the animal's chafed neck.
Minutes later, the pup waddled to the water and disappeared into Nantucket Sound as a bystander clapped and shouted encouragement: "All right! Good job!"
The rescue of stranded and injured seals, dolphins, and other marine mammals has a powerful emotional appeal, but some conservationists are daring to ask a difficult question: Should we really be saving them all?
Populations of some of the charismatic creatures are skyrocketing. Gulf of Maine harbor seals now number about 100,000, and their population is increasing about 7 percent a year. Rehabilitation facilities are getting tight on space and federal funding.
As a result, some scientists are wondering whether it makes sense to transport and treat disoriented, sick, or injured marine mammals in rehab facilities, at a cost of roughly $2,500 for a typical seal or as much as $157,000 for a dolphin, when such rescues have no impact on the species' survival.
"Sometimes the heartstrings thing to do isn't necessarily the right thing to do," said C.T. Harry, assistant stranding coordinator for the Cape Cod Stranding Network, a project of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
"But when you are on the beach, of course you are looking at that individual," said Harry, who was part of the group that saved the pup near Dowses Beach in Osterville. He said there was no question about rescuing that seal, because its distress was human-caused, it was in good shape, and it didn't require expensive rehabilitation.
Between 1995 and 2004, about 1,900 whales, seals, dolphins, and sea lions were stranded alive on the nation's shores, almost 400 in the Northeast, according to government statistics. More than 1,400 animals were taken to aquariums and other rehab facilities in that time and about 760 of those were released back into the ocean. The majority of the others died or were euthanized.
Some facilities, including the New England Aquarium, have begun to quietly ratchet back their rehab efforts.
And now, a group of esteemed marine scientists has publicly questioned the rationale behind saving some of the animals. In a recent issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, the scientists call for a more analytical response to strandings, and say that people "who expect every live stranded animal to be properly cared for" need to be educated about the costs and benefits of doing so.
The authors, led by biologist Michael Moore of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, say that the nation's estimated 100 stranding organizations lack a common set of standards and ethics. They call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop guidelines on when stranded animals should be rehabilitated, released, euthanized, or left alone to let nature take its course.
The stranding organizations, funded by a mix of federal grants and private donations, should undoubtedly check on sick or disoriented animals, the scientists write. But once on the beach, responders should decide what to do next based on factors such as a species' scarcity, rehab space and funding, the animal's health, and whether studying the creature would help advance science.
The paper points out that there is growing concern that releasing rehabilitated marine mammals back into the ocean could be introducing diseases they acquired in captivity. The researchers also suggest that the stranding of animals is often nature's way of discarding less-fit individuals and that saving them could be promoting the survival of bad genes.
Officials from the Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees the national stranding network, said they are already working on developing guidelines with the organizations and will review the paper's recommendations.
Once, the dilemma of too many marine mammals to save would have seemed a dream to scientists. Hunters decimated many of New England's seal and whale populations by the 1960s.
But the passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act changed all that. While some animals, such as North Atlantic right whales, remain critically endangered, other populations, such as harbor seals, are soaring. Rehabilitation techniques have also dramatically improved.
These successes have led some stranding and rehab organizations to shift their approach. About seven years ago the New England Aquarium decided to focus more on still-threatened species, said Connie Merigo, ead of the marine animal rescue team. It now spends much of its limited rehabilitation money on endangered sea turtles and less on seals. The Cape Cod Stranding Network no longer rehabilitates single dolphins because they do poorly in rehabilitation or when they are released, possibly because they are such social creatures.
"These are questions we are struggling with," said Greg Early, a coauthor of the paper.
Hard choices are made more difficult, stranding experts say, by a caring but often uneducated people who gather around marine mammals on beaches and demand that they be saved. Stranding networks say they spend much time explaining to people why an animal will die or needs to be euthanized.
"People humanize the animals," said Elizabeth Hogan of Brewster, a former volunteer with the Cape Cod Stranding Network. "But I say to them the only difference between [stranded marine mammals] and animals dying in the woods is that you are here seeing it."
Luckily, no tough decision had to be made about saving the seal pup in Osterville. The stranding network had received a call about the seal earlier that day but waited until the local animal control officer checked on it, because seals naturally haul out of the water to rest, sometimes for days.
After the officer noticed the twine around the pup's neck, the group set out from Yarmouthport in two trucks with the words "animal ambulance" on the license plates. If the twine remained around the pup's neck, the growing seal would have slowly strangled as the twine cinched in.
The team arrived at the beach in about half an hour. After developing a plan to handle the animal as painlessly as possible, necropsy coordinator Katie Pugliares gently held down the pup as it tried to bite her. She kept it tucked tightly between her legs, because gray seals squirm and roll to escape, while the twine was snipped from around its neck.
Network technician Jane LaRocque listened to the animal's heartbeat with a stethoscope as part of a health assessment and measured its size. Harry washed sand from its eyes before the group tagged its rear flipper for identification and jumped back.
The seal looked around for a moment and then headed for the water. Everyone smiled. "That was a good one," Harry said.
Beth Daley can be reached by email at bdaley@globe.com.
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