IT was built to rescue Shetland’s seals from one natural disaster. Now it has the chance to save them from another.

The seal unit at Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary was opened almost overnight in 1993 to help animals threatened by the devastating Braer oil slick.

Twenty-five years later the ageing facility has secured new funding to protect animals from the growing danger of “ghost gear”, fishing lines and nets lost at sea.

Braer was a single incident. A tanker carrying Norwegian crude to Canada lost power in a January storm and drifted on to a headland, Garths Ness. Its cargo began leaking straight away.

The crude was light and dispersed quickly, less visible than the thick slicks seen at other spills. But its effects on wildlife was horrific.

Scientists estimate that one quarter of Shetland’s seals were hurt by the poison leaked from the Braer, mostly with breathing problems.

The new threat, in contrast, is no one-off. Plastic fishing nets and lines have gradually built up in the world’s oceans. Such gear can wrap around seals’ neck and flippers, tightening and cutting into their skin as they grow.

Jan and Pete Bevington, who run the sanctuary, said a contribution of £25,000 from World Animal Protection would help them upgrade their seal unit to help animals hurt by fishing debris.

They said: “We see seals with horrific injuries from ghost gear and other illnesses and the new seal unit will allow us to rescue and rehabilitate more seals for years to come.”

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The sanctuary

In July the sanctuary was called out to two reports of seals caught in ghost gear in one day. One sea died after being caught in just 24 grams of plastic netting.

Ghost gear is one of the biggest threats to marine wildlife and kills and injures more 136,000 seals and other marine animals each year.

READ MORE: Call for action over Scots beach with Britain's worst plastic pollution

The new unit will include new energy-efficient heat lamps and insulation. This, the Bevingtons said, would increase the chances of rescued seals surviving and then being successfully re-released in to the wild.

Things have got worse on the island for some species since Braer, for a whole number of reasons. The numbers of common seals in Shetland have halved in the last 20 years. The sanctuary said those common seals it did see were now physically weaker and smaller.

World Animal Protection in 2014 provided a quad bike and trailer for the sanctuary. That enable enables staff and volunteers to rescue the seals from the beach and bring them back to the sanctuary for rehabilitation.

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The Braer, January 1993

Peter Kemple Hardy, World Animal Protection campaigns manager said, “Jan and Pete have been doing some excellent work over the years caring for the beautiful wildlife in the Shetland Islands and we are delighted to support them.

“Ghost gear is increasingly a threat, especially to seals because of their playful and inquisitive nature, but we hope the great work on the ground from people such as Jan and Pete will make a difference and help stop their unnecessary suffering.”

The Scottish Government last year signed up to a global initiative led by World Animal Protection to cut the amount of fishing gear dumped or lost at sea.

READ MORE: Seas and wildlife are still at risk, 25 years on from the Braer oil disaster say conservationists

World Animal Protection reckons that 640,000 tonnes of plastic lines and net are added to the world’s oceans every year. Such floating waste has been linked with the deaths of perhaps 100,000 whales, dolphins, turtles, seals and other sea animals a year.

Under wider pressure on the sheer volume of plastic in the oceans - not least exposed by the BBC Blue Planet documentary -the Scottish fishing industry has been in talks on improved practices with the government.

This summer major UK supermarkets such as M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons committed to tackling ghost gear pollution by their suppliers.

Conservationists stressed that discarded fishing gear was not just hurting sea wildlife. Earlier this summer a picture emerged of two stags which were found dead on the island of Rum. The animals’ antlers were snagged in fishing rope they encountered on the beach.

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Rum stags

Earlier this year a report for the UK government suggested plastic pollution in the oceans would treble unless action was taken.

In March scientists working for green group Greenpeace revealed that two out of three water samples they had taken on Scottish beaches contained tiny plastic particles harmful to seabirds.

Braer - and other slicks - made the headlines. But long-term plastic pollution is the biggest killer, experts warn.