Dead Seals: Back Again

A dead seagull on the beach at  Plaice Cove, Hampton, New Hampshire, about two weeks ago reminded me of the occurrence of dozens of dead seagulls  last Fall, followed by a two week latency period of the appearance of tens of dead seal pups, followed by adult seals washing up all along all three beaches here.

These are not called "charismatic mammals" for nothing.  People walking their dogs stop and look stricken.  (Not so for the dogs, who are mainly curious, but restrained by their owners.) 

Last year the government--remember that thing the Tea Party wants to kill?--swooped in and removed the bodies, and ultimately, through laboratory investigation discovered it was avian flu which killed them, which explained the connection between the gulls first, then the seals.

In the case of this particular seal, the gull pictured (bloody beak and all) was responsible for the loss of its eyes.  This gull has a broken wing and goes for whatever is easiest, and those seal eyes were just too tempting. The seal didn't mind. He's not feeling any pain now.

As I was taking these photos, a passerby told me he'd seen a dead seal up the beach, across the North Hampton line, a week ago.  Neither seal showed any evidence of trauma, shark attack, nets. 

We are thinking avian flu, of course. New Hampshire had its first case of seasonal influenza this week. 

If this is a virus which has jumped species from bird to mammal (seal), the fear is its mutations may make it capable of jumping to dog and to human being.

For now, the good folk of Hampton are not alarmed for themselves. They are unhappy about the seals. You never see them in Hampton, except when they wash up, unless you go sea kayaking half a mile offshore, or sometimes, in some spots, surfing.  But you know they are out there, living their seal lives, zipping to and fro. 

The beach at Plaice Cove never looks the same, day to day. Some days there is seaweed three feet thick covering half the beach. Some days no sea weed, just a spray of round rocks. Some days neither rocks nor seaweed, just hard packed tan sand.  

But today, there was something else. Something we've seen, to our dismay,  before.  

He looks so perfectly adapted to his environment, dappled coat makes him look like a pile of rocks on the beach. He is sleek, and strong, and well padded for the cold water. But he is dead now. What killed him was likely something too small for him to see or to fear or to  sense.  A chain of amino acids which found its way through his nose, down his respiratory tract into his lungs. And, if that is true, the same thing is happening to others, out there in that gray ocean, a few hundred yards beyond where we can see them.