FEMALE ANNOUNCER: This program is made by MPT to enrich the diverse communities throughout our state and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.

NARRATOR: Coming up... A second chance for seals.

(seal moans) And... FISHERMAN: Oh that's a big one y'all.

NARRATOR: Catching big fish, in small boats.

Next.

Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

♪ ♪ (bird calls) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: A lone seal lolls in the sand of an Assateague Island beach, a baleful look in his wide black eyes.

Which almost seem to ask the question... What now?

MADDIE WELCH: The plan is I think we're going to be a little bit more feisty and aggressive than we look.

So we'll have two people on the boards.

You guys are just going to come up right in front of its face and block water access.

We can't get them in the water.

MADDIE: Go go go go go go go.

NARRATOR: Maddie Welch is a stranding response technician with the National Aquarium.

MADDIE: This is a juvenile gray seal pup so mom has already stopped feeding him.

He's left the colony, kind of figuring out life on his own.

Alright you can come on!

VOLUNTEER: Where do you want me?

MADDIE: Right in front of his head.

MADDIE: When we capture these animals it tends to be kind of a startling experience.

He's definitely fighting.

That wasn't very nice.

So that's a really good sign.

So seals can come onto the beach for lots of different reasons.

They naturally will just kind of haul out when they're resting, so they can be totally healthy and we can see them on the beach.

Seals can also come out on the beach when they are experiencing some sort of illness, trauma, maybe they are a little bit more debilitated and for those situations we would call them a live stranding or a stranded animal.

NARRATOR: Luckily medical attention is just a short drive away.

KATE SHAFFER: Welcome to our triage space.

A lot of people are really surprised to find out that we do have seals in Maryland, but National Aquarium has been responding to seal stranding since back in the 90s.

So this is not a new phenomenon.

NARRATOR: For decades, rescuing a stranded animal meant carting it three plus hours back to Baltimore.

But in 2023... KATE: We're stocked with everything to do wound care.

NARRATOR: Aquarium biologist Kate Shaffer helped establish this stranding response and triage center in Ocean City.

MADDIE: So stinky!

KATE: the whole point of this triage center is to be able to provide initial care and stabilize animals before they make the long transport to Baltimore.

MADDIE: Alright get the kennel out.

This is going to be her blood glucose.

NARRATOR: Not every animal makes it but the hope of triage is to improve their chances.

Seal season along Maryland's Atlantic Coast runs from December to May, when local waters cool enough to accommodate these visitors from the north, a few different species of them.

KATE: Harbor seals, which are kind of your typical puppy dog looking seal.

They've got those big eyes and the cute little round face, gray seals, also sometimes referred to as horsehead seals, they have that big elongated snout and then the other species that we see here pretty regularly is the harp seal.

NARRATOR: A species normally found in the icy north Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

Spotted this March morning in the bayside community of Ocean Pines.

HOLLY FOWLER: So at this point I'm just checking out the animal.

So we know by its patterns that this is an adult harp seal.

I'm Holly Fowler, I am a volunteer with the National Aquarium's Animal response team.

NARRATOR: One of about 75 volunteers that help with monitoring and rescue.

HOLLY: When folks call in that they see a seal, we'll come and check it out and see what condition it's in.

A lot of times folks, they automatically think that something is wrong with that animal.

NARRATOR: But sometimes they're just catching rays.

HOLLY: It looks to be a healthy adult, you know, it's not emaciated, it's not severely overweight.

It's relaxing, but it's still lifting its head up, it's stretching its flippers, it's showing that it's responsive.

HOLLY: It's an adult harp seal.

NARRATOR: And it's attracting attention, something seals are particularly good at here in Maryland.

HOLLY: Most of what we do is just trying to communicate with the public and let them know what we're doing and let them be curious and interested, but also not get too close and not, not scare the animal away.

NARRATOR: "Too close" means anything under 150 feet, a standard rooted in federal law: the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

Prior to its passage, seal populations were in steep decline due to overhunting, as well as targeted extermination, bounties on species like greys and harbors, viewed as competition with fisheries.

Today, more than fifty years after hunting and harassment were officially outlawed, seals are on the rebound... Including locally.

And here in Lewes, Delaware, that rebound has enticed this bundled up crowd to brave the March chill aboard a special cruise run by sightseeing organization Cape Water Tours.

ZEAL GOOLSBY: Testing testing 1 2 3, hi everyone.

Good morning.

NARRATOR: And narrated today by Zeal Goolsby, of Delaware-based nonprofit MERR.

Zeal: And MERR stands for Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation and our job is to rescue marine mammals and sea turtles in Delaware.

NARRATOR: They're headed to the best place in the region to predictably spot seals.

ZEAL: We go to the East End Lighthouse first and look for some seals.

Whip out your binoculars or your cameras and look for the very tip that's jutting out we have some very plump cute faces looking at us.

And then we go out farther to the outer wall and the icebreakers where that's where the majority of the seal colony is.

NARRATOR: Seals started hauling out onto these rocks in the Delaware Bay around 2010, and the seasonal colony, the southernmost on the east coast of its size, has grown over the years.

GUEST: Oh my gosh look at that one!

GUEST 2: He's like laying out, lounging out.

Getting comfortable.

GUEST: Yes!

ZEAL: They're just very funny.

I've seen a lot of them act very very funny and they have such big personalities that you can be like oh yeah I've seen that behavior in my cat or dog.

NARRATOR: The latter, not surprising, seals and dogs are evolutionary cousins.

Beyond educating the public, for Zeal and MERR, these trips offer the chance to collect data on how the colony is changing over time.

Counting the seals.

(click) Narrator: Recording their behaviors.

ZEAL: Some of them are half in the water.

Ah, to be a seal!

NARRATOR: Noting the presence of injured animals, or of seal pups.

MERR started seeing evidence of local pupping as early as 2014.

ZEAL: The gray seals will pup from December to February, so it's a new trend and it's very exciting for us.

And then we also take photos of these seals for a photo ID project.

NARRATOR: Once uploaded into an online database, these photos will hopefully help researchers discover where the seals go during the warmer months.

As for the count, it varies a lot from visit to visit, depending on conditions.

But today, after weeks of counts in the 40s to 50s- ZEAL: I counted 122 seals.

ZEAL: So we are very happy to see those numbers and see so many fat healthy seals out there.

GUEST: There's so many!

I didn't even know we had seals here to be honest.

NARRATOR: Of course, more seals in the area also means more seal strandings.

Back at triage in Ocean City... MADDIE: 12 times 2, 24 respiration rate.

NARRATOR: An initial assessment of this gray seal pup, rescued earlier today by MERR from a Delaware beach, reveals some nasty wounds.

(Seal growls) MADDIE: I know you're pissed.

That smell is most likely necrotic tissue, when I rinsed it was running blood so active hemorrhage.

It could have been another seal, it could have been a shark, any kind of predator really.

NARRATOR: But there are also more positive signs.

MADDIE: So this seal has eye rings.

When a seal is hydrated their eyes will leak fluid onto their fur.

NARRATOR: For now, the goal is to stabilize, meaning Pedialyte.

MADDIE: So it's just a good hydration, has some sugars in there.

NARRATOR: And a quiet place to rest, before transport tomorrow to rehab in Baltimore.

♪♪ MARGOT MADDEN: These are herring.

Individually Quick Frozen, also known as IQF, herring.

NARRATOR: Margot Madden is the senior rehab biologist at the National Aquarium's Animal Care and Rescue Center.

MARGOT: The building was built to be the primary quarantine space for the aquarium, as well as our seal rehab center.

NARRATOR: Most animals spend two to four months here, recuperating from injuries and illness.

Right now there are four in residence, all gray seals, named after Baltimore neighborhoods.

There's Woodberry and Waverly both rescues from Delaware, currently enjoying a little lunch.

And right next door, Evergreen, who might look familiar.

MARGOT: So this is the animal you guys were able to film down in triage.

When Evergreen arrived in Baltimore we found that he had some extensive wounds that looked like shark predation.

NARRATOR: In the month since he's arrived, he's healed up nicely.

And today... (seal grunts) he's getting a new roommate, (baby seal moans) Arcadia, the baby of the bunch.

MARGOT: She's a maternally dependent pup, meaning that mom has left a little too soon.

You can also hear her crying.

(maaawww) MARGOT: That maw sound, that usually indicates that the animal is younger, looking to nurse.

NARRATOR: Instead, she's gotten lessons on how to feed herself, they call it fish school.

MARGOT: We're pretty much teaching them how to swallow on their own through this process called assist feeding.

We will then try to get them to do it on their own but with assistance through tongs like this.

She's doing really good for you know, a maternally dependent pup.

NARRATOR: Ready to graduate, to Evergreen's larger pool enclosure.

MARGOT: We're going to bring Arcadia in and we're going to introduce them.

When we put animals into the big pool for the first time they need to demonstrate that they're strong enough to be able to get in and out on their own.

NARRATOR: In is one thing.

Out takes a little more practice.

And remembering those fish school lessons in this brand new environment, with this stranger present, that's even harder.

MARGOT: Now we just need to work on getting them to be able to tolerate each other.

Enough that they can both eat together, but she hauled out great.

NARRATOR: Just a couple weeks later, a small crowd gathers on the beach at Assateague State Park, for the first release of the season, a double: Waverly and Woodberry have both passed all of the rehab benchmarks.

MARGOT: We're at good weights.

Our bloodwork looks great.

We're off antibiotics.

They're able to hunt and forage on their own.

NARRATOR: Waverly was also fitted with a satellite tag, not every seal gets one.

After a brief acclimation period... MARGOT: we let them sit in their crates for 15 minutes, smelling and hearing and reorienting.

NARRATOR: The crates are opened.

KATE: Sometimes they bolt right for the water and other times they take a little while to adjust to the environment NARRATOR: Woodberry takes the first tentative waddle into the sand.

KATE: if you think about it, both of these animals were really young when they were rescued so they really haven't spent that much time out in the wild, so this is a big scary world.

[Chuckles] NARRATOR: But with a quick goodbye to his more hesitant former roomie... He scoots his way past the crowd of onlookers.

MARGOT: Everyday the ins and outs of rehab and stranding response it's not always the most rewarding, so being able to come down and have you know a happy ending to a couple cases each season, it's really rejuvenating for the entire team.

NARRATOR: Waverly follows not far behind, and even after she disappears into the surf, her SAT tag continues to track her journey north into the waters off New England.

KATE: This is what we all want is to be able to put them back out to lead a healthy life in their environment.

♪♪ NARRATOR: On a chilly fall morning, an hour before sunrise... DALE TEETS: Watch yourself.

NARRATOR: Dale Teets pushes his kayak into the Patapsco River.

DALE: We're in that amazing period of time that we call Rocktober, when our rockfish really start to feed and get prepared for the wintertime.

NARRATOR: He and two buddies turn their kayaks toward Baltimore harbor, an intimidating sea of power boats, barges and container ships... But an ideal playground, as well, for these tiny boats.

DALE: It's really scary at times.

I think the natural remedy to that is being smart about being stupid out here.

ALAN BATTISTA: The Patapsco is very much overlooked.

NARRATOR: An engineer by trade, Alan Battista has shared his years of kayak fishing experience in several books and on a popular Youtube channel.

He looks at this harbor and sees three hundred years of industrial artifacts, old piers, concrete blocks and boulders, that fish love to hide in.

ALAN: Structure plus current equals stripers.

NARRATOR: Striped bass, or rockfish.

They've been biting along these northern docks all week, prowling the surface for food before sun-up.

ALAN: You can get into three, four foot of water where the big boats can't without scaring those fish.

NARRATOR: Alan has been hunting rockfish from kayaks for decades, inspired by a generation of hobbyists and tinkerers in the late 1990s who modified cheap plastic kayaks, and set out with cameras rolling in search of impossibly big fish.

ALAN: When people see giant fish in a small kayak they really kind of open their eyes and wonder how that's possible.

DALE: They're not taking anything on top right now.

♪♪ NARRATOR: A lack of bites on the surface suggests the fish have moved to deeper water.

It's going to take a lot more work and all their skills for these anglers to find their prize.

ALAN: You know I started posting pictures of these big fish and kayaks.

And it was a very cool time to see the entire industry explode the way it did.

I believe it was one of the fastest growing sports in the early 2000s.

NARRATOR: That growth sparked a design revolution.

Manufacturers started building more stable boats.

And technology in the form of early pedal drives, moved the hard work of locomotion to the rider's legs, leaving hands free for fishing.

ALAN: None of us really knew anything about the sport, we were creating it as we were going.

So we all had different ideas about how we wanted our kayak to be situated and rigged up.

Rod holders.

You've got wheels called landing gear and you can pull it right out of the water.

You've got high end electronics, you've got forward facing sonar, you've got lithium ion motors.

BOB LOMBARDI: To me, it's not really about affordability because this is an expensive kayak as kayaks go.

This is about a fishing style.

I want to be to the left of that tree.

NARRATOR: Bob Lombardi also hosts a YouTube fishing channel.

He normally fishes in the shallow waters on the lower eastern shore.

BOB: Tide's starting to come in now.

NARRATOR: Where huge tides pass through mazes of creeks and rockfish ambush bait in the currents.

BOB: That was amazing.

I fished today the way I would have fished down there, and that was basically looking for a current break.

NARRATOR: Along a rock wall on the harbor's south side, Bob's sonar picks out balls of baitfish in the outgoing tide, a sign of predators nearby.

BOB: And when it wrapped that edge, the current picks up speed, the bottoms uneven.

If you're going to catch a fish, that's where it's going to be.

That's what you come out for right there.

ALAN: I think they're moving.

There is a traditional view of what trophy fishing was.

Large boats trolling the channel edges out in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.

We've got a few mile radius, and that's about it.

ALAN: All right, I'll give it a shot.

A lot of times when we're transitioning from one spot to the other, we're trolling lures.

NARRATOR: Dragging lures of varying weight at different depths, painting a clearer and clearer picture of this small environment.

DALE: This thing in a couple of weeks will be super, super fat.

ALAN: Fish on!

You catch fish, and suddenly you realize that there are different patterns that most people have never really stumbled upon before because they were just zooming along.

They were looking for that next big bite.

NARRATOR: Alan has been focused all day on piers, teasing jig lures unevenly through the water to attract wary hunters.

(splashing) ALAN: There was bait in there.

I figured they'd be hanging on an ambush point.

DALE: This is a great way to be intimate with the wildlife, and 95 is within a quarter mile of us.

The hustle and bustle is right there, it's cool.

ALAN: Kayak fishing has completely changed what I believe striped bass fishing is.

DALE: There it goes.

Sweet.

♪♪ DAMIEN COOK: I think these things taste better than rockfish.

NARRATOR: Damien Cook fishes the edges of the Chicamacomico River on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Damien grew up here, in the midst of the kayak fishing boom.

DAMIEN: I started out, in a sit-inside and, I mean, you sneezed in that thing and you were going over.

NARRATOR: At the time, another dramatic change was sweeping this ecosystem.

DAMIEN: Honestly I caught my first one by accident when I was perch fishing.

NARRATOR: The Northern Snakehead arrived here in the early 2000S, an invasive fish from Asia that spawned sensational headlines.

Its voracious reputation spurred fears that it could destroy ecosystems across the state.

DAMIEN: Might actually go back up there to see if that fish will bite again.

NARRATOR: Twenty years later, Damien made headlines of his own, catching a world-record 21 pound northern snakehead.

DAMIEN: I caught it in Dorchester, about as detailed as I get about that.

NARRATOR: And he did it from a modern fishing kayak.

DAMIEN: I looked at my scale like my scale's broken.

(laughs) I had, I weighed it three times.

NARRATOR: While snakehead remain an ecological threat to native species, they've taken on a new identity here, trophy fish.

And Maryland has become known world-wide as a premiere snakehead fishery.

BUTCH HUBER: They have the foothold, they've been established here.

NARRATOR: Damien and his colleagues Matt Fletcher and Butch Huber are full-time snakehead guides.

DAMIEN: From April until November, I'm running 6 or 7 days a week.

BUTCH: I get people from PA, New Jersey and New York.

I had a guy fly in from Texas.

DAMIEN: I take all my customers out in the kayaks.

NARRATOR: Kayaks may have been adapted to hunt rockfish... but they were the tool of choice from the start to hunt this newest fishing prize.

DAMIEN: In the shallow waters around here, we use these anchor poles.

I weigh 280, and I got probably about 100 and some pounds worth of gear in here, and I can stand up and fish just fine.

STEVE KAMBOURIS: Ooh!

That might have been a hit.

Push through these pads and stay silent.

NARRATOR: Steve Kambouris is a champion angler with a widely followed Youtube channel.

STEVE: Look at that.

NARRATOR: The online snakehead community he helped pioneer, has steadily grown into a real-world community, spawning tournaments across the state.

It's the unique biology of the snakehead that sets it apart as a sport fish.

STEVE: What you'll see is a big wake following your lure.

NARRATOR: Instead of simply biting a lure, snakeheads expel air from their primary lungs, then suck in their prey, resulting in a characteristic "pop" (pop) on the surface.

(pop) STEVE: Oof.

NARRATOR: They are famous for their cunning and their strength.

STEVE: Oh, that's a big one, y'all.

Oh, that's a big one!

FISHERMAN: Alright it's coming in front of me now.

NARRATOR: More likely to be found around the shore, tucked into spots where they can ambush other fish, or frogs, or even a struggling mouse.

DAMIEN: They can ambush from there.

They can be under this bush, that bush in that pocket.

You get something like this.

You really want to pick it apart.

STEVE: This flooded forest goes back 20, 30 feet or more.

Five inches of water back in here, that can be enough for a very big snakehead.

There's a fry ball here.

It might come your way.

NARRATOR: Steve and Butch have spotted a fry ball, a mass of young snakeheads.

Find one, and parents are sure to be nearby.

MATT: There he is, awww!

NARRATOR: But for all the skill and experience of this crew... DAMIEN: Missed one here earlier.

NARRATOR: The snakehead bite is fickle.

STEVE: I've had great days here.

This is not one of them.

MATT: They're only giving you one shot.

NARRATOR: Cold air the night before may be to blame.

FISHERMAN: These fish like it kind of warm.

NARRATOR: Or the sun.

Or maybe they're tossing lures of the wrong style, wrong shape, wrong color.

Every trip is different.

But as the sun starts to settle, a pop... And then another.

And another.

FISHERMAN: So I just hooked into this fish.

You can literally see the bubble trail if you look over.

STEVE: Not a monster.

But I tell you what, it's a snakehead.

(laughs) They've turned some areas from a spot that you would never think to go fishing, because the best thing you could possibly hope for, in there would be like a 12 inch bass, or maybe a six inch bluegill.

MATT: A little baby.

It'll make a taco, though.

STEVE: And now you can catch a 5, 10 pound sport fish.

FISHERMAN: Get him!

STEVE: That is just completely insane.

A lot of bass fishing gear is not rated for the power of snakehead.

FISHERMAN: No.

30 inches.

STEVE: Heck yeah, dude.

NARRATOR: Buoyed by their late-day success... FISHERMAN: How many fish did you get?

FISHERMAN 2: Four.

FISHERMAN: I got five.

NARRATOR: Carrying enough snakehead to cover a few dinner plates, the kayak crew turns to home.

FISHERMAN 2: It's always good to have friendly competition out on the water.

Hey Butch you ready to race?

NARRATOR: Peddling, paddling, motoring, and laughing.

FISHERMAN: Give him, like, six kayaks.

NARRATOR: And enjoying in the moment what may be the kayak's greatest strength.

STEVE: When it comes to being immersed in nature and just going and seeing some incredibly beautiful, serene places, there's no better way to explore that than kayaks.

♪♪ NARRATOR: To stream episodes of Outdoors Maryland , visit mpt.org/outdoors and don't forget to follow us on social media.

(owl hoots) Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural resources at dnr.maryland.gov, or download the official mobile app.

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