Written By: Ru Xue Jiang
On January 7, the AYLUS Dix Hills Branch dedicated their time to help out the Suffolk County parks for data collection on seals, learning ways to deal with seals, and their history. Before, the state and local Canadian governments put a bounty for killing and skinning seals because they had the misconception of seals killing all of the fish populations and causing low fish populations despite them not being the ones pouring pollution into the ocean. Recently, the Marine Protection Act has deterred harm and promoted the recovery of seals. However, there are still other sources of danger such as entanglement (netting -string, rope, ribbon, fishing line) leading to strangling and death. AYLUS members of the Dix Hills Branch learned about this history and was also educated on how to interact with seals (no harassment, feeding, or close proximity of closer than 50 yards) and what their behaviors are like (fears from certain boats and sounds due to previous harassment, sleeping patterns, resting patterns and the norm of lying on the beach). This education allowed AYLUS members as well as other people in the community to understand how to properly handle seals. Then, members were taken along the coast to observe seals from afar to count and take pictures of them. AYLUS members hope to further help their community’s marine life through data collection and by spreading words of what constitutes harassment from the education they received.
Volunteers: Christina Mink (2 hours 30 minutes), Ru Xue Jiang (2 hours and 30 minutes), Nadia Khan (2 hours), and Ming Chen (2 hours)
