Meager feeding opportunities left some malnourished. Others were injured in collisions or entanglements with fishing equipment. A few had infected wounds after being bitten by other animals.
The revolving door at the facility, which can house 20 of the pinnipeds, has been overwhelming at times, Schoelkopf said.
"We've just never seen this many over the course of one winter," said Sheila Dean, the center's codirector. "It isn't just seals, it's other animals, too - like the whale that was found on the beach [in Mantoloking, Ocean County] and brought in last week."
Seals are mostly Arctic dwellers, but some species, mostly harbor seals, have colonized farther south over the last three decades, according to Laura Bankey, manager of conservation for the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
Biologists theorize that increasing seal populations and human habitat encroachment have contributed to the animals' making homes as far south as the northern Chesapeake Bay, Bankey said.
The New Jersey coast, where the Atlantic meets the Delaware Bay, is a perfect landing for wayward sea creatures, especially in stormy years. Many of the grounded seals taken to the center are yearlings, born in the spring or summer, that were exhausted and near starvation after drifting from their nurturing colonies.
The unrelenting nor'easters and severe snow created a difficult environment for migrating and overwintering marine species, Schoelkopf said. And the New Jersey coastline seems to have been a refuge.
No other eastern beaches have experienced an unusually high number of marine mammal strandings, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"The weather created a lot of problems," Schoelkopf said. "Some [seals] couldn't make it back to their usual breeding grounds up north in time to give birth. And this coast is like a funnel for these species."
