The seals were emaciated, with scars on their bodies, but are now healthy, well-grown and weighing almost 50 kilograms. They were ready to return home to the sea, the zoo said.
A total of four emaciated and injured grey seal pups were brought to the zoo this spring, but one animal's life could not be saved. The other three seals learned to eat fish in the water during their rehabilitation and gained weight and were ready to return to the sea.
In previous years, several seal pups born in Riga Zoo and rehabilitated in Riga Zoo have been released into the Baltic Sea equipped with GPS transmitters. According to the zoo, monitoring data show that most of the animals successfully acclimatize to life in the wild. They leave the Latvian coast for the southern Baltic Sea and later for the Swedish coast.
Guna Vītola, Head of the Animal Collection Department at Riga National Zoo, said: "This gives us reason to hope that the animals we have released this year will also manage to settle in the sea and grow big. Good luck to them!"
