Hundreds cheer as rescued Alaska seals return to the wild

KENAI, Alaska (KTUU) - Hundreds of people lined Kenai’s North Beach to watch two rehabilitated harbor seals waddle back into the water, closing out a rescue season that leaned on pilots, conservation workers and volunteers across the state.

Stanley Sealton and Ester, the last of the center’s 2026 harbor seal cohort, were released together, marking the end of a summer of round-the-clock care for animals that arrived starving, sick and, in Ester’s case, alone on a remote mudflat.

“My goodness, it is just a happy ending to a very busy summer season,” said Jane Belovarac, wildlife response curator at the Alaska SeaLife Center.

“And so being able to release the last of the 2026 cohort is just so cool for not only the staff, but for our interns as well.”

The crowd, many of them kids fresh out of school for the day, watched from a respectful distance as staff opened the kennels.

“There was so much excitement. There were so many kids and families here,” Belovarac said. “When we opened the kennels and they went into the water, you could just hear like a cool like sigh... You could just feel the excitement that everybody saw when these guys waddled into the water.”

Before any seal earns that moment, it has to clear a strict set of medical and behavioral benchmarks, Belovarac said.

“There are several milestones that a seal needs to meet before it is determined to be survivable in the wild,” she said. “The first is they have to be healthy, so they need to be clear of all medical concerns.”

Most arrive “skinny,” “emaciated” and “dehydrated,” often with infections, she said, and must also be weaned off all medications.

Seals must then prove they can hunt on their own during what Belovarac calls “fish school,” gradually being introduced to whole fish after coming off formula.

Weight is the final threshold. Alaska’s cold water requires seals to reach at least 45 pounds before release, up from the 12 to 15 pounds typical when they first arrive at the center, Belovarac said.

Stanley Sealton’s return home

Stanley Sealton was the season’s first arrival, found skinny and emaciated near the Kenai River, the same region where he was released.

“It’s kind of cool to be able to return him back to his home grounds,” Belovarac said.

His rehabilitation wasn’t without setbacks.

“He had some challenges learning how to fish school, so it took a little while for him to figure out how to eat fish on his own,” Belovarac said. “But once he did he became quite the champ,” and he left the center as one of its larger seals released this year, at roughly 55 pounds.

Along the way, Stanley developed a particular habit that told Belovarac exactly when he’d turned a corner.

“A funny thing about Stanley is that he became very picky when it came to his fish. Like he would only eat fish that had heads on them,” she said.

Center staff typically cut down the larger herring they feed the seals, heads and all, but Stanley held out.

“So with the time when he started actually eating all parts of the fish, I was like, OK, Stanley, you can now start gaining weight and start preparing yourself for release.”

Stanley’s name came from students at Seward Elementary School, who chose it through a fundraiser after a naming honor, originally auctioned off at the SeaLife Center’s annual gala, was donated to the school.

Staff narrowed dozens of student suggestions down to four or five options each for a boy and a girl, since the seal’s sex wasn’t yet known. The school then turned the naming vote into what Belovarac described as a penny war, with students dropping coins into bins to back their favorite names. The effort raised more than $300 for the SeaLife Center’s Wildlife Response Program.

“It was really cool that the kids really got into it,” Belovarac said. “And yeah, Stanley Sealton, I think was an appropriate name for the seal.”

Ester’s rescue relay

Ester’s path to the SeaLife Center began in June with a single phone call, and unfolded, start to finish, in one night.

“That was quite the whirlwind evening,” Belovarac said. A pilot and his wife were walking a beach when they spotted the seal struggling alone in the mudflats, with no other seals nearby and the tide far out. “We knew the seal was likely orphaned,” Belovarac said.

Center staff coordinated with the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District to recover the seal, and the same pilot who first spotted her happened to be flying back to Anchorage that day. Once the SeaLife Center had permission to take her into care, the seal went from the mudflats near Tyonek to a private plane to Anchorage, where a SeaLife Center volunteer picked her up and drove her south on the road system to Seward.

“It was quite a relay,” Belovarac said, “but it was really cool that the seal was able to get to us all the way from Tyonek.”

Rescues like Ester’s depend almost entirely on that kind of improvised, community-built chain, Belovarac said, since the SeaLife Center is the only marine mammal rehabilitation facility in Alaska.

“We’re responsible for over 30,000 miles of coastline, and thus we cannot get to those places ourselves,” she said. “We depend on the local communities to work, to report to us about stranded animals, and then to help us find the resources to get the animal to us.”

Bush pilots regularly donate flights, she said, and fishermen who spot stranded seals will occasionally bring them aboard their boats before connecting with a wildlife trooper or biologist.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to just folks who like, ‘Hey, my brother does this, my uncle does that, my sister can have a boat,’” Belovarac said. “That’s what helps us get the animal to us.”

When Ester arrived, she was small and underweight, and later developed gastrointestinal problems that kept her from digesting food properly, Belovarac said. Medication and careful nutrition turned that around.

“This past month, she was learning how to fish, she was gaining weight, and now we released her as a healthy seal,” Belovarac said.

What comes next

Stanley was released wearing a satellite tag, which the SeaLife Center hopes will let staff track his movements in the weeks ahead. Seals released into Cook Inlet often migrate out to the Gulf of Alaska, Belovarac said, where many spend the winter hunting along an offshore shelf.

Belovarac urged anyone who spots a seal or other marine mammal that appears to be in distress to call the SeaLife Center’s stranding hotline, or NOAA’s, rather than approach the animal.

“You want to call first because a lot of times when an animal is sick or injured, they want to bite and we don’t want anybody to get hurt,” she said.

Photos and video sent in by phone can help staff quickly determine whether an animal actually needs help, she added.

For Belovarac, releases like this one are a reminder of what the work depends on.

“Rescuing marine mammals is definitely a community thing,” she said. “We would not be able to do what we do if it wasn’t for people calling us when they have concerns about an animal, helping us to recover an animal, and then through their donations... to be able to feed and give these animals the medical care they need.”

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