The first three howlers of the season, which have been nursed to the Norddeich seal station in the past few weeks, have been released back into the wild. This time there are fewer young animals – also because of Corona.
Norden / Juist – After a last, brief look back at their transport baskets, Max, Martin and Sixtyfour crawl carefully across the beach towards the North Sea. The three young seals are the first howlers of the season, which have now been released back into the wild in the east of the North Sea island of Juist.
After being nursed to the seal station in Norddeich in Lower Saxony over the past few weeks, the young seem reluctant to trust their newfound freedom, but then all the more. They let the waves wash around them for a few minutes, then plunge into the waves and disappear.
“Today we had three very relaxed young seals,” explains Peter Lienau, the head of the seal station, with satisfaction. For Lienau, his employees and the voluntary helpers of the National Park House, the release phase begins with this first release. From now on they will travel to the North Sea until probably October and regularly release more young animals.
Without help, they would not have survived
Max, Martin and Sixtyfour had been found as howlers, as the seal boys separated from their mother are called, in June off Borkum and Cuxhaven and were brought to the station. Without a mother and human help, they would not have survived. At that time they weighed just 10 to 11 kilograms. In the past two months or so, they have been fed up on “full board” and now weigh at least 25 kilograms of reintroduction weight.
At the second seal station in Germany, in Friedrichskoog in Schleswig-Holstein, the release period had already started in mid-July. On July 20, the first howler Lønne was released on the Speicherkoog in Dithmarschen. Lønne was found as a premature baby on May 11th with a weight of just 8.6 kilograms in List on Sylt.
How quickly the howlers feed each other fat varies from animal to animal, explains animal keeper Tim Fetting. In Norddeich, the weakened seal babies are first fed with salmon porridge as a breast milk substitute via a soft silicone tube. “Then the animals are gradually switched to fish.” As soon as the animals eat independently, they also gain weight more quickly – up to five kilograms per week are then possible, says Fetting, who has been raising seals for 20 years.
Stock increases slightly
The seals were once endangered because of the distemper seal. According to expert estimates, the population in the Wadden Sea is stable today and has even grown slightly in recent years. Last year, 10,382 animals were counted in the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea – more than ever before. According to the Wadden Sea Secretariat in Wilhelmshaven, this positive trend also applies to the entire Danish-Dutch-German Wadden Sea. Overall, it is estimated that around 41,700 animals live in the wadden seas of all three countries.
And this year? At the moment, the population is being collected again during counting flights in the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea – the results are still pending. Lienau assumes that the number of seal births this year will be as high as last year. In addition, with only a few severe thunderstorms, the weather conditions were almost optimal for rearing the seals in the Wadden Sea. The animals were particularly helped by the fact that there were fewer disturbances from humans in the end.
Because the main birth phase of the seals from mid-June coincides with the beginning of the high tourist season on the coast – i.e. the time when the potential for disruption is particularly great. It happens again and again that mudflat hikers, kite surfers or pleasure boaters come too close to the sandbanks where the mothers suckle their young. “Sometimes a long distance is enough,” says animal keeper Fetting. In the event of disturbances, the mother and her young flee into the water. If the boy couldn’t take in enough milk beforehand, then the energy needed to keep up with the mother would be missing, reports Fetting.
Less interference – less helpless howler
Station manager Lienau determines the decline in disruptions based on the number of deliveries to the Norddeich facility. Only 128 Howlers were recorded this year. That is about a quarter less than last year. 117 of the animals could be raised. As early as 2020, 20 percent fewer animals came to the station. The seals also benefited from the corona pandemic, as the bottom line was that fewer guests came to the coast in early summer, explains Lienau. In addition, the holidays of Pentecost and Corpus Christi, on which there is traditionally a lot going on on the coast, would have been before the main birth phase this year.
Seals need absolute rest during their birth and suckling phase, Lienau appeals. “That means, as soon as you find an animal on the coast, you have to take the brakes, put in reverse gear and leave the animals alone. That is the only right thing, then we also have less howling. ”Dpa
