Juvenile Seal Finds Its Way Onto Roadway In Riverside

A young seal found its way out of the Peconic River and onto a Riverside roadway early Sunday morning — eventually shuffling its way into the Riverside traffic circle — after apparently climbing a “fish ladder” on the Peconic River.

The seal was corralled by Southampton Town Police officers until marine mammal experts from the New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead could come and capture it.

The juvenile male gray seal did not suffer any apparent injuries from its terrestrial tour, rescue center staff said, though the animal will undergo some tests and be monitored for a few days at the center, which is in the Long Island Aquarium building, before being released back into the wild.

“We are very grateful that someone called the rescue hotline and the police were on scene already, thankfully, so it didn’t get hit by a car,” said Maxine Montello, rescue program director for the NYMRC, on Sunday. “He had no external injuries and he seems to have been okay, he was eating on his own, so that’s a good sign.”

The center, which rescues and rehabilitates sick or injured marine mammals, typically tries to encourage animals that have wandered onto land to return to the water on their own but because the adventurous youth on Sunday had made it so far from the water they needed to capture it. The center’s policy is that any time they have to “put hands on” an animal they take it to the center for testing and monitoring prior to release.

Montello said that the center had been alerted to a seal making its way up the Peconic River fish ladder on Saturday, and that seals, especially young ones, have been known to wander away from the water in the past — sometimes for miles.

“We’ve found them in people’s backyards, 3 to 5 miles from the nearest beach,” Montello said. “They are inquisitive and they move along pretty well. Unlike sea lions, which are what people think of when they picture a seal on land, they don’t walk on their flippers, they move along more like an earthworm. But they can get pretty far.”

The fish ladder, a sloped conduit of flowing water that bookends the Grangebel Dam, was installed in 2010 as part of an ongoing effort to remove blockages in the river that can prevent alewives from making their way to the freshwater reaches where they spawn.

Alewives are a species of herring that, like salmon, spawn in freshwater but spend most of their life in saltwater. Millions of the fish return to creeks in Southampton and Sag Harbor each year, beginning in early March. Many more try to make their way into historic breeding areas but are often blocked by man-made obstructions or invasive vegetation that has choked off the trickles of water they once followed. Groups like the Peconic Estuary Program and local town trustees boards have been working to open up blocked creeks and have found that when they do, the alewives can quickly reestablish themselves.

Alewives are also a favorite food of seals and their springtime migration up the Peconic River frequently attracts seals to the river and, sometimes, onto the shorelines along its banks.

Sunday’s adventurous young seal will be cared for at the rescue center for several days to make sure it is in strong health and not ill, Montello said.

It has not yet been given a name, as is the center’s custom before returning rescued animals to the wild.

The New York Marine Rescue Center operates a 24-hour hotline where residents can report stranded or injured marine mammals, including seals and dolphins. That number is 631-369-9829.