Scientists Baffled By Arrival Of Rare Seals

TARONGA ZOO marine specialists are fighting to save the life of the second Antarctic leopard seal to be washed up on a Sydney beach in a week. Found stranded yesterday morning at Clontarf, the gravely ill female had been badly mauled by a cookie-cutter shark. The zoo is already nursing a male leopard seal that was found on Tuesday last week on a beach at Wattamolla in the Royal National Park. It had also been attacked by a cookie-cutter shark. Leopard seals were very rare in Sydney's waters, said Geoff Ross, a wildlife management officer with the National Parks and Wildlife Service. "We might see one every two or three years," he said, adding that finding two in a week was extraordinary. "They are Antarctic ice dwellers which seldom wander further north than Macquarie Island"...