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SITE OF THE WEEK

Since 1997 when the program began, callers have reported over 2,500 stranded seals along the nearby shore to the Marine Animal Lifeline. The bad news is, seals are finding fewer safe places to birth and wean their young here.

VISIT the MARINE ANIMAL LIFELINE web site

The good news is, this region now has a program to save them. Just this week, six rehabilitated seals went home to the sea. Fourteen more, according to field volunteer Mike Gerstner are "in the shop" awaiting their return to the ocean.

The nonprofit program, located in Westbrook, Maine, is the brainchild of Greg Jakush. Formerly an expert in dolphin rehabilitation programs in the Florida Keys, Jakush traveled up the New England coast in 1995 looking to start a marine program. Large numbers of stranded seals needed him, so he stayed. When I discovered the program online at Stranding.org, Jakush was unavailable for an interview -- off saving seals. Webmaster Mike Gerstner picks up the story.

"Pups get separated from their mothers who come ashore on what appears to be uninhabited beach. They won't come back and nurse the pup if there's suddenly 1,000 people there."

Many stranded seals are newborns, not yet weaned, or juveniles who have learned to eat, but not yet hunt fish. Gerstner says he has seen pups so young that their umbilical cord was still attached. Seals may beach themselves due to eye problems, injury or sickness. Some bear wounds that appear to come from the blades of power boats.

Lifeline "patients" include harbor seals, hooded seals, harp seals, gray seals, ringed seals, harbor porpoises, white-sided dolphins, pilot whales and many other species of whales and dolphins. The facility is rated primarily for seals, but will find the appropriate home for any marine animals in danger. They recently attempted to aid sea turtles caught in abandoned fishing nets, but the human damage had been done and the turtles died.

After careful observation, some seals are transported to the Lifeline facility, first to a quarantined area in case of infection, then into the main area for nursing care, then prepped for return to the wild. Seals that have not yet learned to fend for themselves are taught to catch their dinners in a specially designed tank.

THE WEB SITE MAKER

I jumped the gun on this one. Mike Gerstner has not quite released his revised web site design for Stranding.org. It’s still in his cyber holding tank, but due any day now. I've seen the sea blue mockup and makes a timely site much more eye friendly and easier to navigate. But the guts of the content are already online. Visitors will be drawn mostly to the photos of the seals themselves, like big-eye slugs, posing for the web camera. The page of recuperating seals reminds me of the newborn baby gallery that most hospitals now offer, or the excellent online pet adoption database of the NHSPCA site.

These babies, however, are going home to the sea. It's a service that costs, according to Gerstner, from $3,000-$5,000 per animal. So far, that money has come from compassionate donors, but this is the kind of program that can only grow, and the web site is a way of getting the word out – more money is needed. Gerstner says Lifeline is well known in Maine, but lesser known along the Seacoast of New Hampshire where at least a dozen volunteers respond to and save seals regularly, especially during the birthing season from mid-May to mid-June.

Mike Gerstner abandoned the city life years ago, he says, when he visited Maine with friends on a three-day ski trip from New York City. When it came time to go home to the Big Apple, he didn't, trading his suit and wing tips for the parka and goggles of a ski instructor. He worked as a cook, ran a mountain region newspaper, and settled into the screen-printing business.

Today he runs Gone with the Wind, a resource for windsurfers and sea kayakers leaving from scenic Biddeford Pool in Maine. Gerstner heard of the Lifeline program from a customer. As the owner of Gepettos, Gerstner also makes signs, both carved wooden ones (thus the name) and computerized vinyl signs. After donating signs for the Lifeline van, he offered to work on their web site. He became one of over 200 stranding response volunteers, and now works closely with the organization. He's particularly interested, he says, in getting the word out and finding ways to raise funds to keep the Marine Animal Lifeline program going. The web site is just one technique, but a powerful one, he says.

THE UP SHOT

A few weeks back I hitchhiked on a friend's boat out to Duck Island, the most distant and barren of the nine Isles of Shoals. He cut the engine and we bobbed about watching legions of seals watching us from their rocky perches. A number of what I assumed to be males slipped off the island and reappeared not far from our boat. We shouldn't have, but we tossed a few wriggling bait fish in their direction. One grayish seal dived and reappeared with something -- our fish or one of his own choosing -- in his mouth.

Then a slick black bull rose straight out of the water, like a silent fat periscope, just eight feet from our stern. He wore that half concerned, half entreating expression like ET the Extraterrestrial. Then having seen enough, he slid down, turned under the dark water, and sent a farewell spray into the air with a muscular slap. We had been scanned, analyzed and ignored. If only people were so kind to seals in return.

"Seals by nature are very curious and will give you five minutes for free," Gerstner says. "If they perceive a predator, they will head away. But they learn fast and these may have learned that fishing boats provide food."

It's hard with seals. We're too used to seeing them onstage, playing air horns and diving for colored rings. We forget we’re not the only mammal that likes to lounge on local beaches, which to the seals, are ancient breeding grounds. It's hard to remember that they are wild and we are not. It's hard not to respond to the long sad looks and to learn to leave them alone.

"Animals suffer from loss of habitat due to man's increasing presence," Gerstner reminds us. "The environment is not as safe as it used to be for them."

"There's not much we know about these critters," Gerstner says.

No one has yet seen a female give birth on a local beach at night. The pups just appear. No one has seen a mother return to feed a pup, although Gerstner once waited 10 hours on the sand in a camouflage outfit peering through binoculars. We're only just learning about their migration habits. The harbor seal population in Maine seems to diminish while it increases in Cape Cod. Patterns are assumed, but much research is needed.

What we do know, Gerstner says, is that the Lifeline program works. Stranded seals, never weaned, can be nourished, taught to fish, and restored to the wild successfully. They're clever, hardy and packed with instinct. Even when trained by humans, they prefer the hard work of ocean fishing to the domestic ease of captivity.

If you find a stranded seal along the coast -- don't touch it. Don't try to put it back in the water, because it wants to be on the beach. Marine Animal Lifeline volunteers can likely be on the scene in 30 minutes. They are trained to provide a quick physical exam -- checking eyes, gums, heart rate, body weight. Often a healthy pup is left right where it is in hopes that the mother will return, fatten it up, and allow it to follow Nature's course. Gerstner says they used to leave signs asking people not to touch the pup, but the signs only attracted more people. It's the people that frighten the parent from returning and scare the beJesus out of the baby.

"The seal is where he's supposed to be," Gerstner notes, "on the beach. That’s his home. Imagine that people you don't know started coming into your house, sitting on the couch, going to the fridge. You'd be scared too."

That number, in case you see what appears to be a stranded seal is 207-851-6625. The web site, which is easier to remember, is Stranding.org.