Mysterious Seal Moves to New York

A peripatetic harbor seal is baffling marine biologists and others with his attraction to a river environment far from his natural milieu, the ocean. The juvenile male – called Seal 246 – appears to be comfortable with his upstate New York home.

“It is a story like none we have ever heard of … a marine mammal showing such extended affinity and fidelity to freshwater,” Tom Lake, of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Almanac, told the Daily Freeman.

Seal 246’s story begins in April, 2018, when he was abandoned as a pup shortly after birth on Lower Goose Island, Harpswell, Maine. He was brought to the Mystic Aquarium Animal Rescue Program in Connecticut where he was nurtured for nearly a year. He was released back into the sea in January 2019, by now wearing a tracking tag.

The seal made his way south to New York, then headed 100 miles up the Hudson River. In August he was spotted swimming near the Saugerties Lighthouse, where he hung out for nearly two years, apparently happy far from his natural domain, the sea. But he picked up an infection and a skin condition called “seal pox” somewhere – probably after cavorting at Long Island’s Atlantic Beach, as one does – and needed rescuing again, this time from the New York Marine Rescue Center.

After treatment, the center brought him the length of Long Island to the Hamptons for oceanic release. But Seal 246 swam back to New York Harbor and then north up the river again, some 210 miles back to Saugerties, where he was spotted in August 2021, once again near the lighthouse. He’s still there, and no one knows why.

Photo credit: Paul Andreassen / Daily Freeman