Real-Life Decision Making
You are a wildlife rehabilitator working for an aquarium. You work with
marine mammals such as seals, otters, whales, dolphins and sea lions.
One of your tasks involves doing rescues. When someone reports a sea mammal
that is sick or injured, you go out and rescue the animal. You also rescue
orphaned baby sea mammals if they are too young to survive without their mother.
One of the challenges of your job is deciding whether an animal needs rescuing
or not. If you make the wrong decision, you could be rescuing an animal that
doesn't need help. There is no point to that. What is worse, if you rescue
an orphaned baby, you could be taking it away from its mother if it is not
really orphaned. On the other hand, an animal might die if you don't rescue
it.
It isn't easy to make these decisions. You need as much information as
you can get. You find out as much as possible about the situation. You try
to identify the species and figure out the animal's age. You try to find out
how long the animal has been there. You check the creature for signs of injury
or illness.
"Once you have all that information, you can make a decision as to whether
the animal needs rescuing," says Sheryl Barber. She does wildlife rehabilitation
work.
One day, a man calls and reports an orphaned baby seal lying on a rock
surrounded by shallow water. He doesn't know how long the seal pup has been
there. He says he has watched it for an hour and there is no sign of the mother.
You know that seals go ashore to rest regularly. There is no problem with
the pup being out of water. You also know that seal moms briefly leave their
pups while they are at sea hunting for food. However, if a seal mom is harmed
while she is away from a young pup, the baby will not be able to live on its
own.
The man gives you the location, and you set out to find the animal.
You locate it easily, and begin to access the situation. You determine
that it is, indeed, a baby seal. It appears to be healthy. You know that a
pup of that age must be fed regularly. You do not know when it ate last, because
the man does not know how long it has been on the rock. You know it has to
be at least two hours since it ate, and probably more.
You decide to wait and see if the mother returns. An hour later, you are
worried because night is approaching and the tide is coming in. It will be
easy to lose the animal under those conditions. If you rescue it unnecessarily,
it might never find its mother again. If you leave it, it could perish.
What do you do?