| Cornish Seal Sanctuary | |
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 Seals at the sanctuary | |
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| 50°05′31″N5°12′09″W / 50.091968°N 5.202633°W | |
| Date opened | 1975 |
| Location | Gweek, Cornwall, England |
| Website | sealsanctuary |
The Cornish Seal Sanctuary is a sanctuary for injured seal pups, and is owned by The SEA LIFE Trust. The centre is on the banks of the Helford River in Cornwall, England, UK, next to the village of Gweek.
The origins of the seal sanctuary go back to 1958 when the founder, Ken Jones, discovered a baby seal washed up on the beach near his home at St Agnes. This was the first of many rescues. By 1975, the work had outgrown the single pool at St Agnes and a new site was found at Gweek. The Gweek site slowly grew, and today has five pools and a specially designed hospital.
On average the centre has between sixty and seventy seals pups in their care, and in 2018 over eighty have been rescued from the wild. Main reasons for a pup's rescue can be because it is separated from their mothers and are unable to feed, or they can be entangled in marine litter. [1] The aim is to release them back into the wild having given them the best chance of survival.
The rescue normally starts with a call about an apparently abandoned pup. If the rescue team decide that the pup is in danger, it is captured and taken to the sanctuary. Upon arrival, a full medical assessment is carried out, and a course of treatment is decided. Many of the pups are malnourished, with infected wounds. When the seal starts to recover and gain weight, it is transferred to a convalescence pool, where it interacts with convalescing and resident seals, and learns to compete for its food. [1] After a few months, when the seal has reached a good weight and is back to full health, it is released into the sea, preferably near where it was originally discovered. Before release each seal is given a flipper tag, and recently also a hat tag which falls off at the first moult. These provide useful information on the survival rate of the rescues.
The sanctuary aims to rehabilitate all rescued pups and has an impressive record. Between 1981 and 2013 only four seals have been considered as unlikely to be able to survive in the wild. They have joined the full-time residents at the sanctuary Like Ray who has brain damage and is partially blind and is a favorite to many.. The long-term residents are seals unable to survive in the wild due to health reasons or just because they have been in captivity too long. Some of the residents share a pool with the rescue pups. They help at feeding times by demonstrating to the pups the best way to compete for their food.
Some of the other animals in the sanctuary are South American sea lion, southern sea lion (Otaria flavescens), Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and common seal (Phoca vitulina). [1]
The earless seals, phocids, or true seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal lineage, Pinnipedia. All true seals are members of the family Phocidae. They are sometimes called crawling seals to distinguish them from the fur seals and sea lions of the family Otariidae. Seals live in the oceans of both hemispheres and, with the exception of the more tropical monk seals, are mostly confined to polar, subpolar, and temperate climates. The Baikal seal is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal.
Sea lions are pinnipeds characterized by external ear flaps, long foreflippers, the ability to walk on all fours, short and thick hair, and a big chest and belly. Together with the fur seals, they make up the family Otariidae, eared seals. The sea lions have six extant and one extinct species in five genera. Their range extends from the subarctic to tropical waters of the global ocean in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with the notable exception of the northern Atlantic Ocean. They have an average lifespan of 20–30 years. A male California sea lion weighs on average about 300 kg (660 lb) and is about 2.4 m (8 ft) long, while the female sea lion weighs 100 kg (220 lb) and is 1.8 m (6 ft) long. The largest sea lions are Steller's sea lions, which can weigh 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) and grow to a length of 3.0 m (10 ft). Sea lions consume large quantities of food at a time and are known to eat about 5–8% of their body weight at a single feeding. Sea lions can move around 16 knots in water and at their fastest they can reach a speed of about 30 knots. Three species, the Australian sea lion, the Galápagos sea lion and the New Zealand sea lion, are listed as endangered.
Pinnipeds, commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae, Otariidae, and Phocidae, with 34 extant species and more than 50 extinct species described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic lineage. Pinnipeds belong to the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora; their closest living relatives are musteloids, having diverged about 50 million years ago.
The Galápagos fur seal is one of eight seals in the genus Arctocephalus. It is the smallest of all eared seals. It is endemic to the Galápagos Islands in the eastern Pacific. The total estimated population as of 1970 was said to be about 30,000, although the population has been said to be on the decline since the 1980s due to environmental factors such as pollution, disease, invasive species, and their limited territory. Due to the population having been historically vulnerable to hunting, the Galápagos fur seal has been protected by the Ecuadorian government since 1934
Arctocephalus forsteri is a species of fur seal found mainly around southern Australia and New Zealand. The name New Zealand fur seal is used by English speakers in New Zealand; kekeno is used in the Māori language. As of 2014, the common name long-nosed fur seal has been proposed for the population of seals inhabiting Australia.
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