Thank you for submitting a guestbook entry. We love reading your comments, stories and well wishes for our patients! Your post will be reviewed by a volunteer shortly and published after it has been approved. Our volunteers may choose to not publish an entry, but it will be read, and we do forward comments to staff and other volunteers, where appropriate.
Please note that the guestbook is not a contact form or a forum ─ and we cannot reply to your messages here.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Please do not contact the rescue centre for updates. The Marine Mammal Rescue Centre is a hospital. Staff and volunteers’ main priority is animal care, and this site is operated to provide as much information about each individual patient as possible, as quickly as possible. We work very hard to keep the site up to date, seven days a week.
- Can you please post a new picture of “my” seal?
Unfortunately, with the large number of patients we admit and care for every season, we are unable to accommodate photo requests. Especially once seal pups graduate from fish school, catching them in the large pre-release pools for a snapshot involves more luck than careful planning, and we often don’t get lucky. We take hundreds of pictures every week, and if we have any worth publishing, we will do so, whether or not we receive a request. - Can you please post an update on “my” seal?
With the large number of patients admitted every day during the main season, we are unable to accommodate requests for updates. We base those updates on check-ins which each pup, medical and husbandry records, and once there is anything new to say, we will post an update. For patients admitted recently, it may take a couple of days for the basic patient information to become available, and it may take up to 2 weeks for any updates to be posted, as the patients remain in quarantine during that time.
We also regularly update information about their location within the rescue centre, along with progress updates that are displayed at the top of every patient’s profile. Those provide some basic information on how your patient is progressing. - When and where will “my” seal be released?
We pick release sites based on where we believe the animals will be relatively safe and find sufficient food following their release. Sometimes, that site is chosen as late as the morning of the release day. Releases are usually closed to the general public, to prevent unnecessary stress to the animals and ensure a smooth release without too many distractions. Unfortunately, in most cases, we are unable to accommodate requests by members of the public to be present when “their” seal is released. If, however, a release date and the location are made public, that information will be visible on the patient’s profile. - I see that the seal I reported has already been named. Can you change the name, if I want to pick a different one?
The volunteers and staff that care for our patients usually get to pick the name. Unfortunately, once that name has been added to the patient record and is published, we are unable to change it.