Flipper hugs and a special thank you to all the volunteers and friends of Seal Sitters that donated to us through GiveBIG. We are very pleased to announce that we raised $2,998.50 on Wednesday.

These new donations will help greatly in our goal to finance the installation of the Georgia Gerber bronze sculpture of a mother seal and her pup - and to fund the educational components of the Year of the Seal project, including the unveiling ceremony and celebration event at Alki Beach on September 8th. We still have quite a ways to go to meet our financial needs for the project, but this is a fantastic start!

We will continue to seek additional funds throughout the year to meet our funding needs. Donations can always be made through the blog and website.

Thanks so much for making this sculpture dream become a reality! Find out more about our Year of the Seal educational outreach project.

Tags: Year of the Seal

Mark your calendar and plan now to donate online through GiveBIG on Wednesday, May 15th.

Please support Seal Sitters through The Seattle Foundation's GiveBIG, a one-day, online charitable giving event inspiring people to give to nonprofit organizations in our region. Your donation will be partially matched by The Seattle Foundation. This is an easy way to make your donation dollars multiply.

YOU COULD WIN A GOLDEN TICKET!
If your donation is chosen by The Seattle Foundation in a random drawing of 10 lucky winners, you and Seal Sitters will further benefit. Seal Sitters will then receive an additional $1,000 donation and a round trip ticket courtesy of Alaska Airlines. And, as a Golden Ticket winner, you will receive a $100 gift card, courtesy of Starbucks!

IT'S EASY TO DONATE!
Click this link to participate in GiveBIG. PLEASE NOTE! The GiveBIG link is only active on May 15th!

On May 15th, this link will take you to the page for Associated Recreational Council which is our fiscal sponsor. Click on DONATE and then fill in your financial and personal information. In the "Comments" box you must type in Seal Sitters. Then we will be credited with your donation. This is extremely important! If you do not type in Seal Sitters, your donation will go to ARC's general funds and Seal Sitters will not receive your donation.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
Please also spread the word to your family, friends, and business contacts by sending this post to them, encouraging a donation to Seal Sitters on May 15th. Anyone can donate through this GiveBig program.

Seal Sitters MMSN receives no funding from NOAA, the State or City for the work we do. Funds are needed for our dedicated hotline, website hosting, stranding materials, educational outreach and gas reimbursement. Some funds may be used for our Year of the Seal project.

If you have any questions, please email JoDean Edelheit.

Tags: Year of the Seal

Seal Sitters’ Year of the Seal educational outreach project is moving forward at a good pace. The centerpiece of the project is a bronze sculpture to be installed at Alki Beach. Prominent Northwest artist Georgia Gerber has made tremendous progress on the full-scale piece. She is shown modeling the harbor seal mom and pup out of a special supple clay that does not harden, allowing her to work over an extended period of time. The sculpture will be cast in bronze at Georgia’s own Whidbey Island foundry.

The intent of the sculpture is to raise awareness about the health of our marine ecosystem. Harbor seals, who live year round in our waters, are a sentinel species for the Salish Sea. Dangerous toxins in Puget Sound are stored in the blubber of marine mammals such as seals and cetaceans. The sculpture will remind people not only to Share the Shore with wildlife, but to make conscious choices to help clean up our waterways. The sculpture will be in place during the height of harbor seal pupping season in West Seattle. Seal Sitters volunteers will have the opportunity to have this dialogue with literally thousands of people while protecting pups on our beaches.

Another exciting facet to the project is the educational outreach to elementary schools due to begin in May. Seal Sitters will be talking to young children about ways they can truly make a difference for the marine environment. A few of the simple ways kids (and all of us) can help? First of all, don’t litter. Litter on the ground miles away from Puget Sound can end up in it by way of wind, storm drains and streams. Pick up litter on the street and beach - a glass bottle lasts 1million years. A styrofoam cup, 500 years. Don’t use balloons or “sky” candle lanterns to celebrate a birthday. What goes up truly must come down, often into the water. Beautiful flying candle lanterns are simply ugly trash when they land. Even if the package says “biodegradable” that process takes many, many years. Tragically, balloons in the water are often mistaken for jellyfish and swallowed by marine mammals and sea turtles, causing suffocation. We’ll offer kids positive and empowering ways to help protect and preserve our marine life for generations to come. Learn more about marine pollution here.

Seal Sitters needs to fundraise thousands of dollars to supplement our Department of Neighborhoods grant for the sculpture phase of the project. These dollars will be used for site preparation, landscape materials and installation. The Year of the Seal sculpture will be dedicated at a celebration event on September 8th. Also highlighted at the event will be children’s essays and artworks inspired by the project, environmental groups with outreach tables, speakers and fun, interactive stuff for kids - more info to come. Please click here to make a donation.

A public meeting will be held on Monday, May 13th from 7-8pm at the Alki Bathhouse to present the project to the community. Please attend. We welcome your input!

Tags: Year of the Seal

Seal Sitters’ Year of the Seal kickoff event, held Saturday at the Alki Bathhouse, was a huge success. About 50 volunteers heard marine mammal biologists Jessie Huggins (Cascadia Research) and Dyanna Lambourn (WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife) speak about the health of marine mammals in Puget Sound. These two highly respected women (shown at left performing the necropsy on juvenile orca L-112/Sooke) are imminent researchers into the devastating impacts of contaminants and marine debris on harbor seals and cetaceans and ship strike dangers for large whales. Thanks to The Whale Trail’s Donna Sandstrom and Tox-ick founder Laura James who also participated in the event, sharing information about their environmental work.

The Year of the Seal educational outreach project is intended to raise awareness of human impact on our fragile marine ecosystem - and that one person truly can make a difference by the choices we make regarding litter and plastics, pesticides and fertilizers. Click here to learn more about the project and sculpture by Northwest artist Georgia Gerber. Thanks to the volunteers at the event who made a donation to help us raise funds for the landscape and installation phase of the sculpture project.

Huge thanks to Dyanna and Jessie for giving up their Saturday to educate our volunteers who were fascinated by this glimpse into the world of marine mammal “CSI”. The funding for research into emerging diseases, contaminants and methods to help alter the deadly collision course of whales and shipping vessels is largely made possible by the John H. Prescott Fund, which has been eliminated from the proposed 2014 Federal buget. For more information and links to contact your congressional representatives asking to reinstate Prescott funding, click here.

Tags: Year of the Seal, John H. Prescott Fund

Seal Sitters is pleased to announce that our Year of the Seal project’s sculpture component has moved forward with the selection of an artist. A 10-member Selection Committee unanimously selected Georgia Gerber, well-known Pacific Northwest artist, to create a bronze sculpture of a harbor seal mother and pup to be installed on Alki Beach. The panel included members of the West Seattle community (Vice-President of the Alki Community Council, Arts Liaison for Seattle Parks, a respected art gallery owner and a successful local artist) and Seal Sitters representatives. We thank all of the very talented artists who applied for this project.

Seal Sitters is excited that an artist of Georgia’s stature will be creating this work. Georgia has many public installations in the Northwest, including the much-loved bronzes Rachel the Pig at Pike’s Market and the Lowland Gorilla Family at Woodland Park Zoo. Many of her singular works show the intimate relationship of two or more animals and evoke an undeniable emotional response from the viewer. Georgia says, “I like my sculpture to invite an interaction with its audience. This is often meant to be a direct physical interaction, but always I strive to engage the viewer's imagination. I tend to present an incomplete visual narrative; a story is suggested, a feeling evoked, and the viewers find themselves providing details." You can view Georgia’s beautiful work here. A community meeting will be scheduled soon to introduce the project and artist to the public. (photo courtesy of the artist)

The bronze sculpture will culminate our educational outreach project, Year of the Seal. The harbor seal is considered by biologists to be an indicator species for the health of our waters. The sculpture will represent all marine life and is intended to raise awareness of our fragile marine ecosystem and serve as a reminder to Share the Shore with wildlife. Click here to learn more about the project (including children’s art and essay contest) and the role harbor seals play as a sentinel species.

A VERY SAD NOTE:
We are terribly saddened to report that Glenn Brewer, a highly respected artist who was one of our selection committee panelists, passed away Wednesday evening. This gentle man was unfailingly generous and positive. It was our privilege to have had his input on this project. Our thoughts go out to Glenn’s family and friends.

Tags: Year of the Seal

Seal Sitters has formally released a Call to Artists (Request for Qualifications) for our Year of the Seal sculpture of a harbor seal mom and pup which will be located on Alki Beach. The installation site near the Aki Bathhouse has been approved by Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation. A public meeting will be scheduled to receive input from the community.

Call to Artists (Request for Qualifications)
If you are an artist who works in bronze and have a proven track record of public art installations, please download the application here. The deadline for entry is March 22, 2013 and chosen artist will be notified March 26th. Target installation date is the end of August with Harbor Seal Day celebration and dedication on September 7th.

The winners of the children's essay and art contest will be featured on Seal Sitters' website and blog (and other media) and will be recognized at the celebration event.

The Department of Neighborhoods grant project will serve to remind us that ours is a fragile ecosystem. It will raise community consciousness about the importance of protecting our marine environment - and that of all marine life, including shorebirds, that call Puget Sound home. It will provide a unique educational message that our urban shores are home to many other species - and a reminder to “Share the Shore” with wildlife. Learn more about the Year of the Seal educational outreach project here.

Tags: Year of the Seal

Seal Sitters ended 2012 with a throng of seals, most of them looking healthy and happy, hanging around Elliott Bay. We had 8 seals of differing ages using the piers and shoreline of Jack Block Park yesterday.

Volunteers continue to closely monitor the activity and educate the public. It has been a unique opportunity for everyone to see these marine mammals in all their beauty so close. With the holiday break, lots of parents with children have been excited to see “baby seals” and dog owners have been very respectful of their presence. One can observe seals interacting with each other and hauling out and thermoregulating (photo above) on the rocks and beach below the tower. People can see firsthand, too, that seals have markings on their coats unique to individuals; this enables Seal Sitters’ first responders to identify them for our database and health assessments.

After a tough seal pup season in late summer and fall with too many emaciated pups and higher mortality rate, this wave of perky pinnipeds has been a thrill for all of us.

Seal Sitters wants to thank our dedicated volunteers for their many hours of participation in 2012 - and heartfelt thanks to those who made generous year-end donations to help defray our operating expenses. We wish our amazing volunteers and the public a happy new year beyond your wildest dreams.

Seal Sitters has begun the process for implementing our 2013: Year of the Seal educational outreach project, culminated by the installation in West Seattle of a bronze sculpture of a harbor seal mom and pup. A children’s essay and art contest is a highlight of the project.

Tags: Year of the Seal

Seal Sitters is elated to announce that we have been awarded a Department of Neighborhood (DON) grant for our proposed educational outreach project, 2013: The Year of the Seal. The Neighborhood Matching Fund program awards are “matched” by volunteer labor, donated materials, donated professional services or cash. Seal Sitters volunteers will be donating many, many hours to this project, far exceeding the required match in volunteer hours, but will need to fundraise additional monies. Community involvement and mobilization will include art and essay participation by local students, culminated with the installation of a bronze sculpture of a mother seal and pup.

The most abundant marine mammals in Puget Sound, harbor seals are the ones the general public is most likely to encounter on our shores. Seal Sitters uses the image of a harbor seal pup as the “ambassador” for the marine life of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. Harbor seals do not migrate and are year-round residents of our Salish Sea. They are considered by biologists to be an indicator species of the health of our waters. In fact, a 2005 study showed that the harbor seals of South Puget Sound were 7 times more contaminated with pollutants than those in Canada’s nearby Strait of Georgia (read more about the effects of marine pollution on our website). We, therefore, consider this species to represent the concerns we all have for preserving our natural world.

This outreach project will serve to remind us that ours is a fragile ecosystem. It will raise community consciousness about the importance of protecting our marine environment - and that of all marine life, including shorebirds, that call Puget Sound home. It will provide a unique educational message that our urban shores are home to many other species - and a reminder to “Share the Shore” with wildlife.

This will be the third DON grant awarded to Seal Sitters for educational outreach projects, including a public service announcement, street banners which are displayed along Alki Avenue during pupping season and informational beach signage. Read about these earlier accomplishments here. Thanks to DON for such amazing support and belief in our projects.

None of the funds from these matching fund grants cover Seal Sitters’ operating expenses. We receive no funding from NOAA, the State or the City of Seattle for our on-going expenses, such as dedicated hotline, web and blog costs, gas for first responders and stranding, training and educational materials. If you would like to donate to help defray these costs, please click here.

Seal Sitters is currently in conversations with Seattle Parks regarding details of the project. We should be able to give a full report on the project in the next couple of weeks.

Tags: signage, public service announcement, Year of the Seal