Cassie – our healthiest common for 10 years

On 11 June 2009 we received a call from Tom Jamieson, who operates a ferry service to the isle of Mousa, which has one of the largest colonies of common seals in Shetland. Many common seals have come to the sanctuary via Tom.

Cassie still had her umbilicus attached, so she could only have been a day or two old. Tom found her abandoned on the slipway at Leebitton, and when there was till no sign of her mother after 24 hours local Scottish SPCA officer Ron Patterson collected her and brought her to Hillswick.

The last few years have been very difficult for the common seals. In Shetland numbers have dropped by around 50 per cent in the last 10 years. No one has come up with a proper explanation, but during that time the common seal pups coming in to the sanctuary have all been in very poor condition compared to previous years.

Therefore it was wonderful to receive Cassie who, despite being so young, was a good sized, healthy pup – undoubtedly the biggest and the best we had seen since 1999. She thrived from start to finish, first on Multimilk (a special formula for marine mammals from the USA), and then on herring and mackerel from the Shetland Catch fish factory in Lerwick.

It was a joy to work with Cassie and see her grow from strength to strength with no hitches along the way, until she was ready to be released back into the wild. Like other sanctuaries around the North Sea, we have had so many disappointments with commons over the past decade.

We released her into St Magnus Bay on 14 September. She was very keen to go, and we’re sure we’ve seen her several times since.