Seals are curious animals. They like to play with things, and they are very cute when they do it. But a young seal at Pelican Point, just a stone’s throw from Namibia’s famous Skeleton Bay, got into trouble when his curiosity got the better of him.
“If you were a curious young seal exploring the oceans for the first time, would you be able to resist this toy?” ask the rescuers from Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN). “Could you tell yourself that it’s probably safest to stay away from this unknown object and mind your own business?” Or would you like to swim a little faster to get ahead of your seal friends, grab it and throw it around a bit? Maybe throw it in the air? Maybe swim through it until you can’t shake it off anymore?’
The seal in the video you see here clearly couldn’t resist the temptation. Luckily, the staff at Ocean Conservation Namibia spend a lot of their time hunting seals that have managed to get stuck in the stuff we carelessly threw away.
“Your natural instincts would have warned you about predators and dangerous situations, but plastic is not meant to be in your natural habitat,” OCN wrote. “Plastic is a silent killer and has become one of the biggest threats to marine life. It’s an unfair fight and everyone loses.”
Fortunately, this seal was caught and the waste around its neck was cut off, but there are many more suffering the consequences of people’s carelessness.
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