Courtesy of Christian Bruckhart

On Sunday, the New Haven Police Department heralded on X the arrival of its newest “addition.” But instead of badge and uniform, the creature posed next to the cop car had flippers.

That afternoon, officers had arrived on the scene at Chapel Street and East Street, where a caller had alerted them to a live seal on the move, according to NHPD communications officer Christian Bruckhart. The male grey seal, who came from the Long Island Sound, was quickly transported to the Mystic Aquarium to be treated for health issues.

“Wildlife encounters are not unusual in New Haven,” Bruckhart said. “When bears come out of hibernation, we get bear calls. We get turkeys, coyotes. But this is certainly a first in the living memory of the department.”

After being alerted to the seal’s presence, NHPD officers called the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, who connected them with the aquarium, which has a rehabilitation program for rescued aquatic animals. Aquarium staff determined that the seal was only a few weeks old, and was lethargic, dehydrated and underweight. A statement from the aquarium noted that he began fluid therapy and will be fed a diluted fish formula to provide him with proper nutrition. 

“Mystic Aquarium is pleased to have rescued this misdirected young seal in need of help and looks forward to hopefully returning the seal back to the ocean in the months ahead,” Allison Tuttle, Mystic Aquarium’s chief zoological officer, said.

Francesca Battaglia, an animal rescue technician at Mystic Aquarium, hypothesized that the seal had fled its marine habitat because it was underweight and feared being harmed by more powerful seals.

Battaglia told WTNH that the aquarium’s animal rescue team had been previously alerted to the seal’s presence in Branford last week and in New Haven’s City Point on Saturday. Bruckhart heard from a friend that the seal had been previously spotted in Morris Cove, in the eastern part of the city.

Though Mystic Aquarium’s statement claimed the seal had “wandered” into the city streets, Long Island Soundkeeper Bill Lucey — a marine biologist with the nonprofit Save the Sound who is tasked with finding and fixing the estuary’s most pressing issues — was skeptical.

“That’s just not normal behavior,” Lucey said. “They’re not really good at walking; they’re not going to go for a stroll down the road.”

Lucey also said it was unlikely that the seal beached itself while fleeing predators and suggested that someone may have “put it there.” He explained that because they rely on their mother’s milk for months, grey seals never leave their mothers at such an early age. The Soundkeeper suspected that this seal’s mother had died or been killed.

Ultimately, Lucey said that this instance of “wild-urban interface” made him optimistic. In his youth, he said, there were no seals in the Sound. Now, thanks to extensive and ongoing conservation efforts, they are often spotted.

“It’s a good sign, really,” Lucey said. “Maybe not for that individual seal, but the fact that we have a lot of wildlife rebounding in Connecticut — it’s a sign that maybe in the future, we can get a really good recovery in the Long Island Sound and have a lot more fish and wildlife abundance out there.”

Bruckhart said that he hopes to visit the Mystic Aquarium to let the NHPD’s social media followers know that the seal is doing alright.

Grey seals have a life expectancy of 25 to 35 years.