Val Massie helped with caring for the seal pup found on Petroglyph Beach on June 20. The pup was flown the next day to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, where it is gaining weight.
When Dan Trail took his dogs to play fetch on June 20 at Petroglyph Beach, the last thing he expected was to find himself involved in a statewide baby seal rescue mission. But when he reached for his tennis ball and noticed it lying on the tail of a 1-week-old lost seal pup, he sprang into action.
The seal - now called Rocky by her rescue team - was extremely dehydrated when Trail found her. Wedged in between two rocks, high above the receding tide, she was sucking in air on a warm June day.
But now, over a month after her rescue, Rocky is deemed healthy by the team of biologists at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward who are responsible for her return-to-sea rehabilitation.
Rocky has gained 10 pounds since the center took over her care. In mid-July she hit her first benchmark required for release back into the wild: Rocky proved able to catch fish fully independently. Last week, she weighed in at 30 pounds and will need to gain about 10 more pounds and receive no medical treatment before the center flies her home to Wrangell for release back to the wild.
SeaLife Wildlife Response Curator Jane Belovarac cited the Wrangell response team's attentiveness and dedication to Rocky's recovery as the primary reason for her survival after extreme dehydration.
After Trail discovered her, he called federal authorities who connected him with the center, which handles marine mammal rescues and rehabilitation. Soon, Wrangell's state wildlife trooper Alisha Seward and Val Massie joined the rescue operation. A friend who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had contacted Massie to see if she would be available to help with the rescue.
Over the phone, Belovarac instructed the trio on the proper way to handle Rocky and ensure she was given the highest chance of survival.
According to Trail, when he first discovered the pup, she was rather feisty.
"But when we put a towel around her to pick her up, she was so weak by that point that she didn't really struggle," Trail said. "She calmed down and was trembling by the time she was in the truck ... twitching every three to four seconds."
Rocky's rescuers put her in one of Trail's dog carriers but couldn't get her on a flight out of town until the following day.
This meant Rocky was going to have to stay overnight in Wrangell. Already dehydrated, getting the pup much-needed fluids was urgent. Joan Sargent, the lead shelter volunteer at St. Frances Animal Rescue, supplied a saline IV drip, while Caity Rooney administered the treatment as Massie held Rocky down.
The pup received an IV at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the day of her rescue, before resting for the night in a shaded area on Massie's property in order to stay out of the sun and ensure dehydration did not return.
According to Belovarac, she would not have survived without those initial IV treatments.
After an additional IV at 7 a.m. the next morning, Rocky, still in Trail's dog carrier, boarded the northbound Alaska Airlines flight to Anchorage. National Marine Fisheries Service officials drove her halfway to Seward, where a rehabilitation crew met them and took her from there. Rocky's treatment plan began right away.
The pup weighed just 20 pounds on her arrival in Seward - 10 pounds less than what a harbor seal usually weighs at the time of birth. While healthy harbor seals take only a few weeks to reach the 40-pound threshold SeaLife requires for release, Rocky's weight gain has been delayed due to severe malnutrition at such an early stage of life.
However, Rocky (known affectionately to the center as PV2413) is showing no signs of long-term health complications. Now able to catch her own fish, Rocky's spunk has returned.
"She's very sassy," Belovarac said. "She is a little spitfire."
While the SeaLife Center was responsible for Rocky's rehabilitation, Belovarac emphasized how crucial the Wrangell response team's work proved to be. They called before they touched the animal - a crucial step for proper care - followed the directions of the experts and ensured Rocky survived long enough to be turned over to her recovery team
"Huge shoutout to everyone in town, the people that picked her up, people at the airport, and the people that kept her overnight."
Rocky may not be fighting Apollo Creed anytime soon, but she should be back in top form later this summer.
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