SeaWorld welcomes new baby walrus, orphaned in Alaska

All right, a special delivery to SeaWorld. Everybody, a five-month-old Pacific walrus calf is given a second chance at life. He was rescued as an orphan on a remote beach in northern Alaska and rehabilitated by the Alaska Sea Life Center. This 220-pound baby has officially arrived at his new forever home at SeaWorld Orlando. Let's talk to Carrie. She's joining us live from SeaWorld this morning. Carrie, good morning. How are you? Hi, good morning. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. So this little baby is literally a big baby, over 200 pounds. How was he when you first got him? How is he doing now? Yeah, so something really incredible. The Alaska Sea Life Center was able to give him the rehabilitative care out in Seward, Alaska. And then when he was transported to SeaWorld Orlando, he was about 220 pounds. and now he is weighing in at 246 pounds so he is continuing round the clock care, he gets six bottles a day so that's about a bottle every four hours and he is definitely thriving as I think you can see he's taking his bottle right now so this is a really cool opportunity for everybody to get a really up-close look on how he's doing, oh Carrie look how cute he is adorable, okay so talk to us a little a bit about how this will work, because you already have some beautiful walruses there at SeaWorld. So he's being kept on his own for a little bit, right? Just to make sure he's going to be okay and to bottle feed him. And then what happens? Yep, exactly. So right now he's in a short quarantine period. And then afterwards, our focus is going to be getting him acclimated to our main walrus area. So what that means is going on his own timeline to slowly introduce him to our amazing walrus herd that we have here at Expedition Odyssey so we have Uki who was also rescued by the Alaska SeaLife Center, she's only a couple years old and hopefully um with her young age she is going to help uh and now Uki learn a lot of different behaviors and socialization skills, we also have Caboodle who is a 23 year old female, she is very experienced with walrus calves. She's been a surrogate mom to Uki as well. And then we have Garfield who's 44 years old and he has been around many walrus calves as well. So we are really excited to have him here and eventually introduce him to our herd. Ah, that is so sweet. And so how long do you think it will be before you're able to introduce and what is this baby's temperament like? Meaning, okay is it soft tempered is it a little bit feisty and then when you get her out to the rest of the walruses what do you think that's going to be like yeah so um the timeline uh i know everybody is very excited to see him on our main habitat but first he's going to get through the quarantine process and then we'll do those slow introductions so it's hard to put an exact timeline on it. What we want is for him to make that slowly acclimatize to the walrus herd. As far as the timeline, really keeping in touch with the socials. We will update you with that process along the way. But what we can promise you is that once he is on our habitat, he's going to be a great ambassador. He already is a great ambassador for his species. um but please stay up to date on our socials yeah i just can't believe it's been two years for uki i just i remember when uki came so so this is so special uki's gonna have a little friend which i love um for her okay so talk to me carrie a little bit about um just in nature why would a mama abandon her baby like this yeah that's a that's a really good question so So he was found alone on a remote beach in northern Alaska. He was found next to the remains of a couple of adult walruses. So one of the reasons could be there was a large herd, which seems to be the case. He was, sorry about that. He was part of a large herd that was on the beach at that time. Well, that large herd left and he was by himself. So the fact that he was alone by himself is really concerning because walruses are very dependent on their moms for a lot of different things. One, nutrition, learning different survival skills, also learning just socialization and behaviors that are going to set him up for success out in the wild. And the fact that he did not have that makes the likelihood of him surviving out there very low. so this is his second chance and we're just so excited to eventually introduce him to our herd oh he's precious carrie we're so glad that he's with you guys with uki and he's just gonna have a new family and i know we have to wrap but how big will he get how much will he weigh at the end of the day okay well so for example our um fully adult 44 year old male garfield weighs 40 he weighs over 4 000 pounds at times so right now he clocks in at 3 500 3 500 pounds so male adult walruses can get that big and even bigger some large walruses are over 4 000 pounds but that's going to be that's going to be throughout his whole life so he's a lot of growing left to do so right now we're just focused on seeing a slow weight gain his bottle is very high in fat and he loves his bottle he obviously you can see um we're giving him lots of different uh enrichment so uh tunnels are definitely a favorite of walrus calves they like to sleep in them and play in them he loves uh ice water hose oh my gosh she's being so cute right now okay all day we're in love to see him in person i mean seriously he's so cute i think you guys need to keep a 24 hour camera on him so we can all watch okay all right yeah well i'll i'll take that note i'll pass it along oh this has been so much fun carrie thank you so much for joining us and we will continue to keep tabs on this baby thanks carrie all right thank you so much i really appreciate it oh no we appreciate you all right that was so cute