You'll find four harbor seals here: Snapper, Attun, Tongas, and Kordelia. Snapper was born in Mystic in 1984 and arrived at the Center in 1998; having participated in a number of research studies, he's now "retired" and likes to swim laps. Tongas, born in 2007, is Snapper's son; his mother, Chloe, was visiting from the Anchorage Zoo. (Since seal pups don't stay with their mothers for more than three months and there's no maternal bond, his mother returned to Anchorage.) You can identify Atunn by the white spot in the middle of her forehead. She was born in the wild in 2004 and brought here to take part in a dietary study. In fact, many of the Center's harbor seals have participated in dietary studies over the years since they, like the Steller sea lions, have experienced a decline in their population since the 1970's. Atuun gave birth to the Center's youngest harbor seal, Kordelia, on June 8, 2011.
