Frequently asked questions
1. What is the biggest cause of seal pup death?


From the depletion of fat reserves which causes dehydration. Seal fat - is not only to protect from the cold on ice or in ice water, but also a source of energy and fluids for the body. Seals do not drink. After a period of insufficient food, the body fat is used up along with the seals drinking fluidsDepleted animals have no strength to search for food, they become ill through hypothermia or an excessive number of parasites which have critically weakened the animal. The dehydrated animals’ blood pressure falls, it falls into a coma and dies.

2. Why some are there so many undernourished seal pups?


This is the result of too early separation from the female. The female feeds the baby an average of 5 weeks, after which the pup begins an independent life. He needs to build up enough  normal fat reserves before he starts to hunt productively, that is, until he learns to eat fish. Before fish seals eat low-calorie, but slow and accessible crabs, sea crustaceans and molluscs. For the undernourished seal pup it is not enough food, and it quickly loses fat.

3. What happens to the mother seals?


Sometimes she dies, usually in nets. But the main reason for early separation from the mother seal are two things: people and the storms. People (including ships passing too close to the rookeries) scare animals on rookeries into panic, after which the mother loses her calves, so that she cannot find them by voice. A number of the pups wash away from the shore in a storm into the sea and end up on a different shore or island. (In some cases when a female becomes a mother for the first time she refuses to feed the child.)

4. Can a lost or orphaned pup survival in nature by itself?


It depends on how much time he has had with his mother to fatten up. If it is a pup, or a young baby, then definitely not.

5. Why do they need to be saved, if the population is not threatened?


And why not? A less painful death is better than being tortured to death.

6. Why do you only feed them a diet of herring? After all, they eat other fish in the sea.


Because the herring has super qualities . This is the fish on which seals gain weight by leaps and bounds. And our challenge – is as much as possible to reduce length of the seals stay in captivity.

7. Can seal pups adapt to a normal life in nature after captivity?


Yes. All rehabilitation centers around the world have rules that allow the seals to remain wild. We also keep to these rules.

8. Why can’t you stitch the wounded seals, instead of treating the wounds?


Because of their body fat - a very favorable environment for the development of abscesses, and if the wound is closed, the infections will have nowhere to go, an abscess is guaranteed.

9. Do you have landline telephone numbers? What extra codes do I use for the number?


For all mobile phones, the Primorye area code is not needed.

10. Why do distressed seals often have infected eyes (like conjunctivitis or similar)?


Eyes, nose, airways – all become dried up with mucous from dehydration. Which for the pups is a direct result of malnutrition.