‘Narrang’ the 10-month-old Long-nosed Fur Seal was found washed up and injured on Newport Beach in Sydney’s northern beaches in July by NSW Park and Wildlife Services.
The young female seal was underweight, anemic, and suffering from a number of cookie-cutter shark bites.
The seal, whose name means ‘little” in Dharug Dhalang language, was taken to Taronga Wildlife Hospital for urgent care and assessment.
Narrang received five weeks of treatment and care before the veterinary doctors at the Zoo’s wildlife hospital were ready to let her back out into the wild.
She was released just outside of Sydney Heads on Tuesday as part of the NSW Seabirds to Seascape project.
The release was coordinated in collaboration between Taronga Wildlife Hospital, NSW Parks and wildlife, and NSW water police.
Narrang was fitted with a tracking device, and according to Taronga Zoo’s wildlife biologists, travelled 60km north back to the Northern Beaches where she was first rescued.
The first seal to be released as part of the Seabirds to Seascape program, called Skip, has since travelled 10,000km from Sydney to Tasmania’s west coast.
Seal species as a whole face many threats including entanglement in marine debris, ingestion of plastics and commercial fishing as well as occurrences like oil and gas spills in their natural environment
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