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Thanksgiving pup shows up for magazine shoot

Nov/24/08 08:49 PM
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Seal Sitters Max and Nikki are featured in the February 2009 issue of Scholastic Action magazine (published by Scholastic), with a distribution of 550,000 to every high school in the country. The article emphasizes the contribution that young people make both to Seal Sitters and protecting our marine environment and mammals. NIkki is shown here educating the public ~ as a pup miraculously showed up for yesterday’s photo shoot! The East Coast editor wondered if a pup would be on the beach. SS volunteers Brenda and Robin assured her that, unfortunately, pups did not show up for casting calls! Imagine our shock when this little one DID! Read the magazine article here (pages 17-19).

Sadly, the harbor seal pup hauled up on a stretch of Alki Beach next to a large, dead male California sea lion. The unusual sight quickly drew a crowd of onlookers on a sunny Seattle afternoon. It presented a unique opportunity to inform the public of the differences between the two species, as most people erroneously assumed that the large mammal was the pup’s mom.     
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The sea lion had perished on a private beach a month before, was marked and photographed for identification purposes by a Seal Sitter volunteer, but was washed back out to sea with the tide. After resurfacing on the public section of Alki over the weekend, the Parks department buried the carcass today due to its extreme weight (average weight of a sea lion is 800 lbs). The animal had decomposed and was not a viable candidate for a necropsy to determine the cause of death. There was no obvious sign of injury or human intervention evident to the volunteer who responded to the original stranding at Beach Drive SW on October 21.

The healthy pup remained onshore until 9 p.m. last night before swimming off into the Sound.

See a photo of Max protecting the pup here and read about Seal Sitters’ educational outreach to the community. If you’d like to become a Seal Sitter, please visit our website at www.sealsitters.org
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