The Cute Seal Video NOAA Doesn't Want You to See

This is just the sort of video that the folks at NOAA, who enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act, don't want you to see. Here's a woman snuggling with an elephant seal, who is clearly nuzzling back. She's off on the remote South Georgia Island (where Shackleton sought rescue), between Argentina and Antarctica.

These uninhabited island have become like little Galapagos, with animals that are now not so scared of people. (They probably were more wary when it was the base for seal-hunting and whaling operations). Wildlife officials always remind you that seals will bite.

The woman seems to follow the standard procedure for interacting with most wild animals: sit still and wait for the animal to come to you. The seal keeps sniffing her face and even climbs over her. (And, no, he didn't have designs on her; elephant seal mating is much more violent.)

One guide near Canterbury, England, Wildlife Sailing, even offers a tour to a sandbank where you can swim with seals. "No need to swim to them they swim to us!" they say. Who knows what seals would do with human visitors if hunting them stopped completely?

Mexico trying to save the last 150 vaquita porpoises

Mexico just announced it would spend $16 million to get fishermen in the Bay of California to learn not to catch the vaquita porpoise, which is down to only about 150 animals. A website dedicated to saving the vaquita estimates 39 to 84 die each year in nets.

There are so few left that some have even argued they're extinct, so why bother trying to save them? The Vaquita Marina group says people still do see them--and catch them in nets--so they know there are still some around. They've even come up with a handy map of vaquita sightings.
They say that the cartoon-faced porpoise "can not be easily observed, since it flees when boats appear and remains under the water for several minutes without having to come out to breathe."


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If there really are 150 left, the program amounts to $10,000 per vaquita--and a good example of how expensive it is to save a species if we let it dwindle so low. What they'll actually be spending the money on, according to Discovery News, is paying fisherman $4,500 not to fish in the reserve, $30,000 to learn safer techniques and $60,000 to turn in their boat and quit fishing.