ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006

 

 

 

 

 
   

 
powered by FreeFind

ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2007

National Marine Fisheries Service shuts down Marine Animal Lifeline,
largest New England seal rescue site

 

WESTBROOK, Maine--The National Marine Fisheries Service on April 17, 2007 abruptly revoked the operating permit for Marine Animal Lifeline, the largest seal rescue center in New England.

"We're taking this action to immediately reduce any risks to wildlife posed by continued operation of the facility," National Marine Fisheries Service northeast regional administrator Patricia Kurkul said in a prepared statement.

Twenty-one seals were seized and trucked to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. The Mystic Aquarium has rehabilitated and released stranded seals for 30 years, aquarium spokesperson David
Labbe told Associated Press, but usually handles only about 20 per year.

The National Marine Fisheries Service alleged that Marine Animal Lifeline had released approximately 80 seals since June 2006 without testing them first to ensure that they were not carrying marine morbillivirus, a disease related to human measles and canine distemper. Occurring in many marine mammal species, marine morbillivirus killed 20,000 seals in European waters in 1988, 18,000 in a 1998 recurrence, and killed 22,000 seals in yet another recurrence in 2002.

Ironically, the National Marine Fisheries Service became concerned that marine moribillivirus might strike New England waters after Marine Animal Lifeline founder and president Greg Jakush drew attention in 2004 to an unusually high volume of seal strandings occurring along the Maine coast.
"Every individual animal was displaying different priorities or cause of death," Jakush told Emily Aronsen of the Portsmouth Herald. "There was no smoking gun."

But Jakush repeatedly sent tissue samples to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which was unable to identify an underlying cause.

New England Aquarium stranding program director Connie Merigo also reported an increased number of strandings, but observed that most seemed to be malnourished pups.

Marine Environmental Research Institute director Susan Shaw suggested the possibility that a virus was attacking pups with compromised immune systems. Her work had recently found accumulations of pollutants including PCBs, DDT, and mercury in harbor seals living in the Gulf of Maine, decades after most uses of the long-lasting substances were restricted or banned. Such accumulations, Shaw explained, could be passed along with mothers' milk and put pups at risk.

"The permit revocation caught Marine Animal Lifeline off guard and sent board members into a closed-door meeting that lasted for hours," wrote Portland Press Herald staff writer Elbert Aull. "Greg Jakush, the group's president, said federal officials never told him about the new rule, had earlier approved paperwork for seals who had not been tested, and were on a mission to shut his nonprofit down when they arrived for an inspection" on the morning of April 17.

"They came in knowing they were going to shut us down, come hell or high water," Jakush told Aull. Jakush said the inspection lasted only 10 minutes.

"Jakush said he was angry," Aull wrote, "that the service wrote a press release saying his permit had been revoked before it did the site inspection."

Marine Animal Lifeline spokesperson Dianna Fletcher told Associated Press that the National Marine Fisheries Service distributed the press release before Jakush learned of the problems.

National Marine Fisheries Service spokesperson Teri Frady told Aull that the press statement was prepared beforehand "because officials came from out of state and had to be ready in case Marine Animal Lifeline failed the inspection."

Frady said the National Marine Fisheries Service asked all seal rescue centers to begin testing for morbillivirus in June 2006. The agency itself pays for the testing, done at the University of Oklahoma.
Frady told Aull that about 300 seals found stranded on beaches in the northeastern U.S. had been tested since the order was issued, with several positive findings.

"Officials got curious," Aull wrote, "when the lab had no record of samples from Marine Animal Lifeline, which has released about 80 seals since the order was given."

"Marine Animal Lifeline has an annual budget of about $500,000," Aull reported. "About $100,000 of that is provided by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service."

But the funding relationship has had previous rough patches. Marine Animal Lifeline in 2005 "lost a federal grant that accounted for most of its operating budget," reported David Sharp of Associated Press. "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded Marine Animal Lifeline $180,000 to $200,000 for each of the preceding two years," Sharp said, "but rejected the 2005 request for $157,000."

Frady told Sharp that NOAA funded 95 grants in 2005, totaling $8.4 million, more than twice the amount awarded in preceding years, but the Marine Animal Lifeline proposal lost out in a competitive evaluation process.

Marine Animal Lifeline handled 805 animals in 2004, 145 more than the previous high, but received only 533 in 2005, and 323 in 2006, the lowest total since the first three years that the center operated.
Marine Animal Lifeline was nonetheless the biggest seal rescue and rehabilitation organization in the region, handling almost as many animals as all the rest combined: 4,449 total, over 11 years, with capacity for holding 60 at a time.

Other seal rescue groups serving the northeast include, besides the Mystic Aquarium, the Cape Cod Stranding Network; New England Aquarium; the University of New England, in Biddeford, Maine; and Allied Whale, a project of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

Many seals received by the other organizations were eventually sent to Westbrook for rehab and release.

Besides Jakush, Marine Animal Lifeline reportedly employed a veterinarian and three vet techs.

Jakush, originally from Chicago, founded Marine Animal Lifeline after working for several years as a dolphin trainer at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys.

"At that facility," Jakush told Scott Douglas of The Bollard in April 2006, "they had a side program for strandings. I got involved with that, and realized that's what I wanted to do: I wanted to help remove suffering from animals. I wound up managing the program and really getting involved."
After three years of researching opportunities for opening a dedicated stranding center, Douglas founded Marine Animal Lifeline in 1996.

"We didn't have the facilities to do rehabilitation, so we just started with rescue," Jakush recalled. "We'd rescue the animals, and beg every facility on the Eastern seaboard for space to take them. We did that for a couple of years. In 1999, we were able to get enough grant money to lease a facility," in Westbrook, "and begin our rehabilitation program. The first year, in the summer season, we rehabilitated only six harbor seals. We're up to the several hundreds now.

"We're close to outgrowing this facility," Jakush told Douglas. "We just purchased a piece of property in Scarborough. We hope to move by the end of 2007."

Losing the National Marine Fisheries Service permit may put that plan on permanent hold.