Rare seal unexpectedly turns up off Vietnam's Quảng Nam coast
A seal, a rare animal that usually lives in cold climates, has turned up in fishermen's nets off the coast of the former Quảng Nam province in central Vietnam (now part of Đà Nẵng city).
On May 30, authorities in Tam Thanh commune (in the former Tam Kỳ city, Quảng Nam province) confirmed that local residents had released a seal back into the sea.
The rare seal caught in the nets of Tam Kỳ fishermen.
At around 10 p.m. the previous evening (May 29), Nguyễn Như Dũng (34, from Tỉnh Thủy village, Tam Thanh commune) and several other fishermen were hauling nets along the shore of Tỉnh Thủy village when they unexpectedly found a seal entangled in one of them.
The seal was about 1 m long and weighed roughly 30 kg. Notably, it had several wounds on its back near the tail. The fishermen then released the animal back into the sea.
Fishermen release the seal back into the sea.
Seals are rare animals that typically live in cold regions, so their appearance in Vietnamese waters is quite unusual. However, fishermen in Tam Kỳ say a few seals appear to live in the waters off Quảng Nam, and every now and then one is found caught in their nets.
Earlier, in August 2016, fishermen in Tam Thanh commune also caught a seal and handed it over to the Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography in Khánh Hòa province.
The seal is returned to life in the wild.
In fact, this is not the first time seals have appeared in Vietnamese waters. They have previously been caught in fishermen's nets in other central provinces, including Ninh Thuận (now part of Khánh Hòa), Thừa Thiên-Huế (now Huế city), Quảng Ngãi and Đà Nẵng city.
According to experts, most of these seals are juvenile spotted seals (Phoca largha), a species that lives in cold northern seas. They most likely became separated from their group and drifted south into the tropical waters off central Vietnam.
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