BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – PETER NOAH, Manager of Marine World Limited, is asking the Caribbean public to contact him on telephone number (869) 762-9523 if they should ever see the missing Sea Lions and Fur Seals that escaped from the Friars Bay aquarium in the South East Peninsula of St. Kitts.

Speaking with SKNVibes today (Oct. 25), Noah said the marine mammals were recently sighted cavorting off St. Maarten, but they have been hard to track because they could swim up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) a day.

The Manager said that following the passage of Hurricane Omar in the wee hours of Thursday morning, October 16, four South American Sea Lions and five Fur Seals, including a 10-month-old pup, had disappeared but the pup has since returned.

He said the sea mammals are nervous and are certainly having a difficult time adjusting to the wild after living in captivity. He advises that anyone “seeing the animals should not attempt to capture them, but should make an attempt to contact us at Marine World Limited in St. Kitts”.

Noah declared that they are eagerly looking forward to have the sea mammals returned to the aquarium and several experts have been dispersed to capture them if or when sighted.

The South American Sea Lions and Fur Seals had arrived in St. Kitts by air from Uruguay on Tuesday, April 8, 2008.

Marine World Limited is owned by Kittitian businessman Arthur Sharpe, who told this media house that the marine mammals were brought to St. Kitts for educational purposes, especially for the school children, on the importance of their preservation and care as well as how they could be used in saving human lives.

The first group of children to have visited the Friars Bay facility was from the Tyrell Williams Primary School. The children, along with their teachers, were given a conducted tour of the aquarium, where they were exposed not only to the Sea Lions and Fur Seals but also a fever of Stingrays and a shark from the ‘Nurse Sharks’ species.

The Sea Lions and Fur Seals can be found throughout the South American coastal region, and together they comprise the Otariidae family, collectively known as Eared Seal.

Male Sea Lions measure on average 260 centimetres and weigh around 300 kg, while females are usually about 200 centimetres and weigh 150kg, and pups measure around 80 centimetres and weigh from 10 to 15 kg.

The South American Sea Lion has a dark brown dorsal side [upper side of the body] and a yellowish brown ventral [lower side or abdominal plane of the body]. The males have lighter coloured manes and the females have none, but have a lighter coloured fur in the head and neck area. 

Pups are born with a black coat and after a few months they develop a gray coat which at the age of one year is reddish brown.

The South American Fur Seal has a gray-black coat; females and sub-adult males have lighter colouring on the chest. This species varies in size regionally. For example, adult males in Uruguay are about 1.5 times larger than adult males in Peru.

Conversely, adult females in Uruguay are about three-quarters the size of adult females in Peru. On average, adult males measure up to two metres long and weigh 150-200kg, while adult females measure up to 1.5 metres long and weigh 30-60 kg.

Eared seals are able to control their hind flippers independently, allowing them to be particularly agile on land and, unlike the true seals, they swim using their fore-flippers.