On a narrow island in eastern Canada battered by freezing winds, hundreds of gray seal pups lie dead every breeding season, bearing massive, oddly shaped wounds. The injuries start at their mouth and corkscrew down to their chest, tearing down to the bone but leaving the rest of the body intact.
For years, scientists blamed local sharks and boat propellers for the bizarre deaths. But new research in Marine Mammal Science reveals an even grimmer truth. The freshly weaned animals were brutally killed by their own kind: adult male gray seals.“Witnessing mortality on such a massive scale—and in such a violent way—is deeply disturbing,” says Claudia Hernández-Camacho, a marine biologist who was not involved in the study.
“Studies like this are so important,” she says, because they remind scientists that sometimes the killer isn’t humans or the environment—but something much closer to home. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4uMzEU8
I remember this being news, at least, regionally back when.
The chief scientist on board the ship when we were doing tows around Sable Island was a shark specialist. I likely heard it there but it was also in the media. Everyone was kind of mystified about it. How ironic it has taken decades to find seals are doing it.