This past Tuesday we received a phone call at work. It was Chohla, the science teacher at one of the local high schools. A gentleman from town found a dead Steller sealion and hauled it over to the school. He wanted to know if she wanted to do a necropsy on the animal with her students. Since Steller's are an endangered species, not to mention a marine mammal she needed permission from the National Marine Fisheries Service. So, after talking with NMFS, she got the permission she needed to do the necropsy on the following day.
Let me just say, this thing was HUGE! You never really see the entire size of a Steller sealion when they are in the water, but they are impressive! The males can get up to 1500 pounds, and we believe that this male weighed at least 1000 pounds.
It had probably been dead a few days, but was still in pretty good shape. My friends Ellen and Victoria (a veterinarian) came along to watch. Well, Ellen and I watched and Victoria got right in the middle of all the action! You need to wear some rain gear when you work on a marine mammal or you end up smelling just as bad as the animal...and let me just say, there is pretty much no stink as bad as the stink of a dead marine mammal!
We aren't really sure why the sealion died, but it didn't have much food in it's stomach, and there seemed to be a lot of blood in the abdomen. It may have possibly been hit by a boat or attacked by a killer whale. I am not sure we will ever know. Victoria is not very familiar with marine mammal anatomy, so we weren't sure what looked normal or abnormal! We took a bunch of samples for NMFS and they will be sent off and tested.
Chohla is measuring the length of the sealion for the report that needed to be filled out.
Something I didn't know...sealions have a tail! It's short, but it's there. They also have nails on the top of their rear flippers. I don't really think that they are used for anything, but they are still there.
Here is the business end of the sealion. Look at the size of Victoria's hands compared to the sealions head. Their skulls are actually bigger than a brown bear!
If you haven't figured out that this sealion was ginormous by now, take a look at Victoria. She is holding the heart! The aorta, the biggest artery in the body is inbetween her hands on the top. It was so big, you could have put a baseball in it with no problems. Amazing!
Here is what he looked like after they were done cutting! They had to use an ax to get through the sternum. It was really difficult! We were thinking about stretching out the intestines to see how long they were, but it would have taken a ton of work. None of us really had enough time for that!
Here is the business end of the sealion. Look at the size of Victoria's hands compared to the sealions head. Their skulls are actually bigger than a brown bear!
If you haven't figured out that this sealion was ginormous by now, take a look at Victoria. She is holding the heart! The aorta, the biggest artery in the body is inbetween her hands on the top. It was so big, you could have put a baseball in it with no problems. Amazing!
Here is what he looked like after they were done cutting! They had to use an ax to get through the sternum. It was really difficult! We were thinking about stretching out the intestines to see how long they were, but it would have taken a ton of work. None of us really had enough time for that!It was a really neat thing to watch, and we actually learned a lot about the sealion. After we were done, the carcass was towed out past the breakwater. Hopefully it sank, but I don't really know!
