A dead seal found with bullet wounds off the north coast of Scotland had been rescued and nursed back to health as a pup.
The carcass was retrieved from Murkle Bay, Caithness, last month by members of the Sea Shepherd campaign group, who discovered it had been fitted with a flipper tag.
The item was sent to the Scottish SPCA which has now confirmed the animal was one it had rescued as a newborn.
The pup was underweight when it was found on Tyninghame beach in East Lothian in 2012 with an ulcer in its left eye.
It was taken to one of the charity’s rescue centres, where staff named it Kuiper and cared for it before setting it free again into the North Sea off Fife later that year.
Colin Seddon, manager of the SSPCA national wildlife rescue centre at Alloa, said: “We released him at Silver Sands beach, Aberdour, on May 29, 2012, at a healthy 29kg.
“The positive we can take from this incident is that a rehabilitated seal had survived for three years following treatment with the SSPCA which suggests to us that our treatment procedures and protocols are effective.”
Sea Shepherd activists are currently based at Gardenstown and Caithness in an attempt to stop salmon firms shooting seals which are harassing their nets.
Another dead seal with a bullet wound was found by the group floating off the beach of Crovie, near Gardenstown, on July 2.
A spokesman for Sea Shepherd said: “Sea Shepherd UK crew are saddened to have it confirmed that a Scottish seal which had been rescued as a pup, cared for by SSPCA staff and volunteers and released in 2012, had his life taken away from him.”