Officials are monitoring a seal with black tubing around its neck on Rathlin Island.<\/p>\n
The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) said it has been visiting the island off Co Antrim every two weeks to monitor the seal’s condition.<\/p>\n
The department in Northern Ireland said it is liaising with Exploris Aquarium and Seal Sanctuary in Portaferry, Co Down.<\/p>\n
Head Keeper at Exploris Aquarium Euan Morrison said the seal is a female and is “roughly around two or three years old”.<\/p>\n
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Mr Morrison said she is “perfectly healthy” and is “bright and alert”.<\/p>\n
“Its head and tail are up and it looks nice and fat,” Mr Morrison said.<\/p>\n
He said Exploris was first alerted about the seal at the start of August but said it might have had the tubing around its neck since May or even longer.<\/p>\n
Mr Morrison said intervention measures are difficult to implement without disturbing other seals in the colony.<\/p>\n
“It would be lovely to catch it but it isn’t straightforward as it is a big animal,” Mr Morrison said.<\/p>\n
He said it would take five to six people to try to restrain the seal, so they have to wait to see if its condition deteriorates and then intervene.<\/p>\n
Mr Morrision added they cannot “dart” the seal because it could disappear in the water and fall asleep.<\/p>\n
Cherie Toland from Lurgan, Co Armagh, took a video of the seal while hiking on the island last Saturday afternoon and said it was upsetting to witness the seal in that condition.<\/p>\n
“I thought it had happened recently as the seal wasn’t emaciated. However, I found out from locals it had been reported three weeks prior to me seeing it,” Ms Toland said.<\/p>\n
“My first instinct was we needed to try help so I posted footage on Facebook and a couple Rathlin groups in the hope people could advise. I then contacted Seal Rescue Ireland, Exploris Aquarium and British Marine Divers Life Rescue,” she said.<\/p>\n
DAERA said it is asking members of the public to notify it and its partners, such as Exploris Aquarium, of any further sightings of the seal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials are monitoring a seal with black tubing around its neck on Rathlin Island. The Department of Agriculture,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-133819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}