Federal officials said yesterday they had found a home in that Midwestern city for a female gray seal that has spent the last six months in a Brigantine facility recuperating from a broken back.The Indianapolis Zoo will welcome the 7-month-old female pup next month. It will join four California sea lions, three harbor seals, and one gray seal in the zoo's collection."This is the best news we've had in days," said Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine. "Now it's just a matter of driving the animal out to Indiana."The seal was stranded April 16 in Asbury Park after a violent nor'easter tossed it against a jetty. The impact broke a vertebra in its back.The Brigantine center rescued the young pup and nursed it back to health. But because its back flippers remain paralyzed, the seal cannot be released back into the wild.For months, the center has been desperately trying to place the gray seal pup - and a blind, older harbor seal that was also stranded in April - in a licensed zoo or aquarium. Both seals faced euthanasia.Yesterday morning, Schoelkopf picked up the phone to learn the younger seal had been placed by the Fishery Service of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Later in the day, he heard from a facility in California expressing interest in the blind seal.The staff at the stranding center was ecstatic."We're looking forward to getting them both out so we can resume our jobs as animal rehabilitators, not babysitters," Schoelkopf said.

Schoelkopf said his tiny rehab facility is not equipped, or licensed, to keep animals for extended periods."We just don't have the space or the budget," he said.Keeping the seals has taxed the stranding center's funds. Every day, each eats 10 to 12 pounds of mackerel, squid or herring.
And because the animals are usually found in northern latitudes, as far north as the Arctic circle at this time of year, the center has had to spend up to $1,300 a month to keep them in air-conditioned comfort.The gray seal pup will ride to its new Indiana home in the back of the stranding center's F-150 pickup truck. Air-conditioned, of course. It will spend the 10-hour road trip in a carrier similar to those used to transport dogs on airplanes, though it will sit on a large pile of ice.The number of sea mammal strandings on New Jersey shores has increased dramatically - from 19 in 1978 to 224 in 2005 - during the three decades the center has been open.Seals, which were once rarely found south of New Jersey, are now routinely seen in North Carolina and occasionally even pop up in the Caribbean, Schoelkopf said."It coincides with global warming, milder winters and overfishing," Schoelkopf said. "They go where the food is. It may also be because there is a healthier population of seals. As you might guess, healthy seals breed more seals."