TO HELP, FIRST DO NO HARM.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - Sometimes, Tamara McGuire's job is downright sad.

It's heartbreaking enough to respond to a call of an abandoned marine mammal, to find a brown-eyed seal pup frantically flopping around on a beach, crying for its mother.

But it's people who can really bring McGuire down. Take, for example, the call she got two weeks ago from a man in Waldport who wanted to know the Hatfield Marine Science Center's policy on abandoned seal pups. She told him that in most cases the pups should simply be left alone because their mother will return for them.

"I'm not going to let you take it, then," the man told McGuire, the center's Marine Mammal Stranding Network coordinator.

He then told her that he'd "rescued" a pup, was keeping it in a cardboard box and intended to raise the frightened seal on his own.

McGuire sent out state troopers who were prepared to arrest him, but he released the animal before they arrived.

McGuire joined the science center in mid-February in a position created to streamline the process of dealing with stranded seal pups. Now, all reports of stranded marine animals are directed to her, which cuts back on multiple responses to the same animal and allows her to effectively coordinate a widespread volunteer network to respond.

Eventually, McGuire hopes to develop a database that will allow her to track the number of "strandings" in different areas, which could reveal useful trends. But that's a project for a later date.

Lately, she's been swamped keeping up with all the calls. During Memorial Day weekend, McGuire fielded almost 80 calls about abandoned pups and other marine mammals.

One reason for the increase is that this is seal season. Seals "pup," or give birth, from April to June.

But the rise in calls, McGuire said, is also a sign that more people are out on the beaches, encountering the distressed animals and sometimes illegally harassing them, if unintentionally.

The misconceptions about seal pups and other stranded creatures is sure to persist as the weather gets warmer on the Oregon Coast and more people are out on the beach.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 makes it illegal to harass, hunt, capture, collect or kill any marine mammal or attempt to engage in any such contact. Violation is punishable by a fine of up to $20,000, imprisonment for up to one year or both.

"Leave them alone, leave them alone, leave them alone," says Judy Tuttle, curator of mammals at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. "They're not stranded. The beach is a nursery. When Mom goes out hunting, she parks them on a beach. It's the safest place to be."

A wailing seal pup is hard to resist, however. People will toss buckets of water on the pups, which frightens them. People pick them up and pet them, which can make them imprint on humans and hurt their ability to survive in the wild. Some will have dogs and young children pose for pictures with the pups - which is too close.

The closer the pups are to humans, the less chance that Mom is going to return; the pups have a 50 percent mortality rate anyway, so a reproducing female can better serve the species by protecting herself.

"If you had a bucket of water and dumped it on a bear cub, you'd probably be dead," McGuire said. "Seal moms have a harder time moving on land, and they have a history of being hunted, so the ones that have done the best are the ones that know people are bad news."

Some people put the pups in their cars and drive them to aquariums as far away as Portland. Others try to raise them in bath tubs. One couple headed home to Las Vegas with a pup after their daughter became taken with it.

"Some people just don't think," Tuttle says. "Once you pick it up and carry it from the beach, you've signed its death warrant."

The people themselves can get hurt, too. Seals and sea lions have sharp teeth, and can be rather territorial, especially during mating season, Tuttle says.

"If you go down on the beach during (sea lion) breeding season and get within a male's territory, he'll bite you, knock you down, smash you into a pancake," Tuttle says. "Adult males weigh between 600 and 1,000 pounds, and they have needle-sharp teeth."

Which is why McGuire spends less time rescuing animals from abandonment than from people.

In the best cases, she or a volunteer will respond to the call and find that the pup is gone, which means the mother came back for it. Other times, the news isn't so good.

Lydia Primavera called McGuire on Sunday after she discovered an abandoned seal pup on the beach near her vacation home in Yachats. She noticed neighbors too close to it, and warned them to get back, as they were hurting the animal's chances for reuniting with its mother.

The rest of the weekend was consumed with this task, Primavera says. She and the neighbor put up signs warning people to stay back, and tourists would yell at her, arguing that other people had gotten close enough to take pictures, so why couldn't they? A couple of kids actually tried to carry the pup up the beach in a T-shirt.

By the time a swamped McGuire could get to the scene, the pup had died, presumably of starvation and dehydration. Primavera had spent the weekend trying to keep people away so that the mother would come back.

Mom never showed. With some help, Primavera buried the creature on the beach, and a volunteer placed four stones at the spot, a crude grave marker.

"We call him the Memorial Pup now," says Primavera, choking up.

The death is sad, but people need to accept it, McGuire reiterates. Seal pups have only a 50 percent chance of survival. If every one of them were rescued, it would only mean more seals and sea lions in captivity, throwing off nature's balance.

McGuire can only hope that people will learn to leave abandoned animals alone. But she knows it's hard, remembering one of her first rescue calls.

"I got out there and thought it was dead," she said. "It lifted up its head and had these big brown eyes, and I thought `Now I understand.' '

SEAL PUPS

Since sea lions don't breed in Oregon, pups found along the beach are sure to be seals. Seal pups have a short, blue-gray, sometimes spotted coat. Sometimes, a mother leaves a pup on the beach while she's out foraging for food. If such a pup is seen, they should not be approached.

HOW TO HELP

The Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network needs volunteers to help with abandoned marine animals on the Oregon Coast. For more information, call Tamara McGuire at [phone].

To report an abandoned marine mammal, call the Oregon State Police at [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Seal pups are often left alone on the beach while the mother is out hunting for food. This pup was rescued. With seal pups on the beach, marine experts plead: `Leave them alone'