Featured Image Credit: Steve Dixon
By Sarah Sharkey
Earlier this month, volunteers walked 3 hours through sleeting rain to rescue an entangled baby seal. The rescue mission was launched when Annie Ivison was called on Tuesday morning by a public beachgoer who had seen the distressed mammal.
Ivison, the manager at Natural England’s Lindisfarne national nature reserve and trained marine mammal medic, called the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) and requested help for this rainy morning rescue.
Steve Dixon, an MDMLR volunteer, and Ivison set out with a knife and a seal-carrying bag to recuse the stranded animal. The beach was deserted when the recuse crew arrived, but the team trekked on for three miles before finding the pup trapped in a lobster trap.
Ivison said, “The pup lay still and we thought we were too late but as we moved closer she lifted her head. She was badly entangled in a broken lobster pot and the poor thing was utterly exhausted. She had a deep wound where the rope had cut into her. We carried a handle each of the seal bag as we hauled the 19kg of pup back across three miles of sand, dunes, and farmland and Steve drove her to the vets”
The pup recovered quickly and the vets deemed her able to be released soon after her arrival. She swam off with only one glance back towards her rescuers.
Without their help, she would have most likely died because she would not have been able to feed.
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