July 14, 2017 — The Woods Hole Science Aquarium is mourning the loss of its two beloved harbor seals, Bumper and LuSeal.
They died within 11 days of each other, and the causes of their deaths are unknown, officials said. The aquarium announced that it would be closed Friday and Saturday to allow time for the staff to recoup.
The two seals came from different states — LuSeal was stranded on Cape Cod in 2002 when she was just a month old, and Bumper was found on a South Hampton, N.Y., beach after being wounded by a shark in 2007 — and fate led them to live together at the aquarium’s modernized seal habitat, where they swam, ate, and sunned themselves, as seals are wont to do.