Visitors will flip over rescued seals
New Moody Gardens arrivals adapt quickly as staff pampers recovering harbor pups
As three trainers at the Moody Gardens Aquarium Pyramid emerged from a cave-like structure where six harbor seals and sea lions were on exhibit, pails of fish in hand, two newcomer harbor seal pups bobbed their heads above the saltwater tank they now call their home, ready for the day’s feed.
The seal pups “galumphed” their way onto the rock formation in the exhibit — the technical term for the inchworm-like motion that seals make on land, a sort of elegant belly flop — where a trainer dropped fresh capelin fish into their eager mouths to the delight of a handful of aquarium attendees.
“They’ve both got great stories, and they have adapted and done so well,” Maggie Reynolds, a senior biologist at the aquarium, said Wednesday. “They’ve been on exhibit for only 24 hours and they’re really comfortable. They’re loving it; they’re having a good time. They swam for about 12 hours yesterday before they got out of the pool. They were like, ‘I want to see it all, I want to do it all.’”
The year-old harbor seal pups — a spotted male named Tomato and a brown female named Ravioli — are the aquarium’s newest additions, having arrived at Moody Gardens in March after being rescued near Crescent City in Northern California, both having experienced their share of trauma.
Tomato was found near the Crescent City Harbor boat ramp with severe injuries due to a suspected dog attack, permanently damaging his right eye and leaving him with wound marks still visible on his body.
Ravioli was born several months premature. She was found unattended on the beach by a well-meaning family in the same area as Tomato. The family
made the mistake of thinking they could domesticate it, but Ravioli suffers from neurologic and balance problems due to a vestibular disorder. She had seizures and was unable to regulate her body temperature. A slight tic is noticeable when Ravioli feeds, her head subtly twitching as Reynolds holds a capelin above her mouth.
Both seal pups were eventually taken in by the North Coast Marine Mammal Center in Crescent City, a rehabilitation facility where they were nursed back to health but ultimately were not released back in the wild.
Ravioli, because of her neurologic and balance problems, would be unable to hunt successfully in the wild. Tomato, with weakened eyesight, would not be able to forage for food well enough to sustain himself in the wild, which could lead to malnourishment.
“It’s a governmental process” whether to return the seals to the wild, said Diane Olsen, assistant curator of seals and penguins at the Moody Gardens Aquarium Pyramid. “The center does not make that decision. The National Marine Fisheries Service makes that decision.”
Once the seals were deemed unreleasable, federal officials go through a list of aquariums and zoos that have the capacity to take them in. Moody Gardens was a natural fit given that the aquarium already housed a rescue sea lion and harbor seal. The aquarium was able to arrange for Tomato and Ravioli to stay together, having become familiar with each other while completing their rehab.
“The two of them knew each other almost their whole lives, literally,” Reynolds said. “So it’s nice — some places might only have room for one animal, we really wanted them to be a pair.”
Eventually, Tomato and Ravioli made the 2,324-mile trip from Crescent City, Calif., to Galveston Island via FedEx airplane, with Reynolds and another biologist at their side monitoring progress. They were kept in quarantine as they got acclimated to their new environment and are now on exhibit for the public to see.
“They’re very smart animals. These guys are only about a year old, so they’re sort of soaking everything in,” Reynolds said. “Just like a little kid is running around in their environment, these guys are the same way, they learn very quickly. ‘Oh you’re giving me fish? This is a good thing, you’re a lot of fun, I want to hang out with you, I want to see what you’re doing.’”
Indeed, the pups looked like naturals in the climate-controlled 70,000-gallon saltwater tank, pirouetting and swimming in the water as if they had been there for years. They were joined in their tank by a much larger blind California Sea Lion named Squirt, a 9year old rescue from Santa Barbara that has been at Moody Gardens for the past seven years.
Reynolds said Tomato and Ravioli are swiftly picking up behaviors like lifting their heads for fish when they’re ready to eat, and lifting their flippers. The trainers use a buoy attached to a pole that serves as a target for them to focus on to learn these behaviors.
While Tomato and Ravioli will be on exhibit for the public to enjoy for a long time, there is also a chance that their companionship could bear fruit in a much more important way: reproduction to ensure long-term survival of the species.
Both seal pups are a couple of years from being ready to mate, but Reynolds and Olsen said they would make ideal candidates given that they were both born in the wild. The only potential concern is Ravioli’s health issues.
“We all work together to maintain the best genetic groupings that we can because we want to keep these animals in our collections for as long as we can, so that folks can come and see them and really learn about them,” Olsen said. “So they can learn if they see a harbor seal on the beach, mom had to go out and eat, leave them alone!”