Friday, March 29

In St. Petersburg, a card file will be compiled for the identification of seals

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The Friends of the Baltic Seal Foundation, together with the State Unitary Enterprise Vodokanal of St. Petersburg, will compile a card file that will allow identifying each Baltic seal of the Gulf of Finland by the pattern of spots on the coat. This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of SUE Vodokanal of St. Petersburg.

“The location, shape and size of the rings on the animal’s skin are individual, as well as fingerprints on a person’s hand. All the data obtained are analyzed for further systematic work to save the population of these rare animals. Now, as part of the work, a card file is being compiled that will allow identifying each Baltic seal of the Gulf of Finland by the pattern of spots on the wool,” the report says.

The press service explained to TASS that the work began not so long ago, and now there are five animals in the file, which were captured so that the “drawing” was clearly visible. Observation is usually conducted from mid-summer and continues throughout the fall, until the end of navigation. Samples of wool and fatty tissues of dead animals are also taken for research with the help of special tools. The materials are sent to the laboratory for research.

“The situation with animals is stable so far and resembles previous years of observations. The alarm is caused by the decreased number of rare Baltic seals in the places of their autumn feeding. In previous seasons, there were 20-25 animals on vacation, this year the number of seals on the same stones did not exceed 16 individuals,” said Vyacheslav Alekseev, founder of the Friends of the Baltic Seal Foundation.

The Baltic grey seal, the Baltic and Ladoga ringed seals are listed in the Red Book of Russia. There are about 100 individuals of the Baltic ringed seal and about 1 thousand Baltic gray seals left in the Gulf of Finland.

A source: https://nauka.tass.ru/nauka/16410043

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