In a report as part of Call to Earth, CNN meets the specialised team of rescuers working to disentangle seals that have been caught in plastic pollution in South Africa.
Seals play a vital role within the marine ecosystem. Martine Viljoen of the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation’s Marine Wildlife Management Programme (MWMP) explains, "They help balance everything out from being a prey source to being a predator themselves. They indicate how the health of the ocean is doing and they give us a valuable insight how the bigger picture of our ocean health."
Once heavily hunted, Cape fur seals are now a protected species in South Africa, and it is estimated that around 2 million inhabit the coasts of Southern Africa. Still, they face significant challenges with climate change, human-wildlife conflict, and more recently rabies, all areas of concern.
Brett Glasby from the MWMP talks about their work, "The programme that we run here, the Marine Wildlife Management Programme, is unique. It`s the first of its kind in the world, where we are essentially reducing conflict between humans and animals within the space of a working harbour/tourist destination. We are the buffer."
One of the most widespread and tangible threats facing these creatures is plastic pollution, most often commercial fishing debris. The team at MWMP built a dedicated seal platform with wide slats in the V&A harbour in Cape Town. Glasby talks about the design, "We have around 100 seals a year that come into the waterfront with plastic entanglements just like these around their necks. But if they come and rest on our platform here with the wide slats, we get to climb into wetsuits, swim below them and disentangle them. And we use a very special tool for that."
Teams of snorkelers underwater use these unique tools to safely disentangle seals caught in plastic, cutting them free from items such as fishing line or plastic bags. Glasby demonstrates, "This is our cutter, and it is a hooked blade on the inside, very thin to fit through the wooden slats. And the idea is that we`ll swim in a wetsuit underneath the platform. We poke this through the slats, hook it onto the entanglement and give it a really good tug. And that`ll snap it off the seal`s neck."
The MWMP tells CNN that in 2023, they disentangled 124 seals at the V&A waterfront alone, a statistic that is increasing year after year. Viljoen concludes, "Seals need our help. We’ve put them in situations that they can’t get out of themselves, and we have to step in and help."