Lithuania will make a concerted effort to save its grey seal population, which has managed to stabilise though continues to remain vulnerable, in the Baltic Sea as it contends with shrinking fish stocks, pollution and the negative effect of climate change.
Over the years, Lithuania has introduced several bans, including on toxic pesticide usage and commercial cod fishing, in an effort to fortify its grey seal population.
The effects of climate change on the seals’ habitat are severe, as the Baltic Sea, which is shared by the European Union and Russia, rarely freezes over now, depriving the seals of sanctuaries to rear their cubs.
“Mothers are forced to breed on land in high concentration with other seals,” said Vaida Surviliene, a scientist at Lithuania’s Vilnius University told the AFP news agency. “They are unable to recognise their cubs and often leave them because of it,” she said.
Survival rates for cubs in the wild can be as low as 5 percent, according to local scientists.
Rearing cubs ashore also leaves mother seals exposed to humans, other wild animals, rowdy males, as well as a higher risk of diseases, according to Arunas Grusas, a biologist at the Baltic Sea Animal Rehabilitation Centre in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda.
Grusas first began caring for seals in 1987, when he brought back a pup to his office at the Klaipeda Sea Museum, which now oversees the new rehabilitation centre built in 2022.
“We taught them how to feed themselves, got them used to the water – they had to get comfortable with the sea, which spat them out ashore practically dying,” Grusas said.
The very first cubs were placed into makeshift baths set up in an office. The scientists then nursed them back to health, first with liquid formula before moving on to solid food.
In the late 1980s, the seals were nearly extinct – there were just about 4,000 to 5,000 left in the sea, from a population of about 100,000 before World War II.
Recently, a growing number of adult seals have been washing up on Lithuanian beaches.
Scientists like Grusas point the finger at near-shore fishing nets, where seals desperate for food end up entangled and ultimately drown.
Once the seals are ready to re-enter the wild, scientists release them into the sea with GPS trackers, which show the seals generally favour a route north towards the Swedish Gotland island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, where fish are more plentiful.
Some, however, are scared to venture off alone and return to the boat from which they were released. Eventually, they all find their way back to the wild.
