Lost Baby Seal Found Wandering in Downtown New Haven Has Been Rescued—and Attained Local Fame
The juvenile gray seal recently weaned off his mother’s milk and ventured five miles into the coastal Connecticut city
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Donna Domek was making her usual morning stroll around New Haven, Connecticut, when she spotted something unusual in front of a local restaurant: a baby seal.
The creature was hanging out near Shell & Bones Oyster Bar and Grill, which is situated right on the water at New Haven Harbor.
“It was the most amazing thing,” Domek tells the Washington Post’s Sydney Page. “I have never seen anything like it.”
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The small pinniped seemed a bit lost, so staffers from the nonprofit Mystic Aquarium arrived and gently moved him to a nearby beach, where they could keep an eye on him. They identified the creature as a male gray seal who was likely between six and seven weeks old.
“We’re like, he’s still bright and alert and looking good, maybe we can just relocate him to a safe beach,” says Francesca Battaglia, an animal rescue technician at Mystic Aquarium, to WTNH’s Tina Detelj. “Our team did do that. But then, unfortunately, the next day, he showed back up in the middle of the city there.”
This time, the baby seal had appeared in downtown New Haven, roughly five miles from where the aquarium’s staffers had placed him.
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Onlookers called the police, who initially thought they were being pranked.
“I started getting pictures, and I thought they were A.I.-generated,” Christian Bruckhart, a spokesperson for the New Haven Police Department, tells the Washington Post. “It’s not something we encounter on a daily basis.”
Authorities quickly realized the photos were real, however, and that a baby seal was indeed waddling around on Chapel Street.
Meet the newest addition to the department! pic.twitter.com/anx1ERrLQn
— New Haven Police Department (@NHPDnews) February 16, 2025
Officer Tyler Camp responded and carefully ushered the pinniped to the side of the road, away from oncoming traffic and out of harm’s way. Camp stayed with the seal for two hours, until representatives from the aquarium and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection arrived.
In the end, the group decided that the lost baby seal needed a little extra care and attention before returning to the ocean. They transported the creature to the aquarium in Mystic, a town roughly 55 miles east of New Haven.
When he arrived at the facility, the baby seal was lethargic, dehydrated and underweight, weighing just 28 pounds. Now, the team is focused on boosting the pinniped’s strength and weight. They want to see him gain 10 to 20 pounds before they release him back into the wild, which they hope to do within the next few months.
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So far, staffers are feeding him fish formula and teaching him that fish are food—an effort known as “fish school.” He’s even had a few visitors: Police officers from New Haven stopped by to see how he was doing, report USA Today’s Margie Cullen and Thao Nguyen. (They also brought pizza from three New Haven restaurants for the seal’s human caretakers to enjoy.)
The creature doesn’t have a name yet. But will likely get one soon, perhaps after his caretakers get to know his personality a bit more.
“We pick different themes [for names] every year,” says Allison Tuttle, the chief zoological officer at Mystic Aquarium, to the New York Times’ Christine Hauser. “This year’s theme is bugs. But we will probably see if the New Haven Police Department would like to name the seal.”
This week, the police department polled the public on names for the city’s little visitor. As of Thursday, the leading suggestion was Chappy, for the street he was found on, reports WTNH’s Bailey Wright.
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Whatever he ends up being called, the baby seal is already a local celebrity.
“It’s made quite the splash in the neighborhood,” says James Gross, who lives near the oyster bar where the seal was initially spotted, to the Washington Post.
Gray seals are found throughout North America’s New England and mid-Atlantic regions, where they hunt for fish, squid and crustaceans in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. Adults typically weigh between 550 and 880 pounds and measure between 7.5 and 10 feet long. An estimated 450,000 gray seals live off the coasts of the United States and Canada, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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But why was the baby seal drawn to New Haven in the first place? More than likely, he recently weaned off his mother’s milk and was venturing out on his own for the first time.
“He just kept getting deeper and deeper into the city, following his natural instincts at first, and then realizing that he was just totally out of his element and lost,” Battaglia tells NBC Connecticut’s Matt Austin. “They usually won’t go that far into the city. They’ll move up the beach, typically to try to get away from the weather and larger seals.”
Bruckhart has jokingly offered another idea: Maybe the seal was on a mission to try one of New Haven’s most iconic dishes.
“We assumed he was here to try the clam pizza,” he tells USA Today. “But I can’t confirm that. We’re just happy he’s safe.”
