Sea Lion With An Unusual Injury | Wild Pacific Rescue 103

This time on Wild Pacific Rescue. He's obviously in really, really poor shape. The team helps a lost sea turtle begin the long journey home. All right, turtle. And fights to save a sea lion with a shocking injury. We see him. It's a crossbow bull. Police pitch in to help rescue an orphaned harbor seal. Send the GPS coordinates. I know. While at the rescue center, another seal struggles to keep her sight. A seal that's blind is not a releasable animal. And a tiny bat battles the ravages of time. Certainly she's older. Her teeth are all ground down. In British Columbia on Vancouver Island. The Marine Mammal Rescue Center team is in Cowichan Bay on an urgent rescue mission. That's a heavy one. We're here in Cowichan Bay because we've had a report of a California sea lion with a pretty serious entanglement. Looks like it's monofilament fishing gear. Good thing is they're so habituated, should be able to get you close. Oh, I mean that even this distance is amazing. Oh my god, look at this guy on the end. Look at the size of you. Once known as the salmon capital of the world, Cowichan Bay is a sheltered inlet and a vibrant fishing community on the east coast of Vancouver Island. And here in Cowichan, it's not just fishermen on the hunt for salmon. This time of year we have a lot of chum salmon in this spot and sea lions are here to take advantage of that. A lot of new sea lions coming in, that's good. They've had their breakfast, now they're coming for their mid-morning nap. Sea lions use the docks at Cowichan as haul-outs where they rest and sun themselves when not on the hunt for fish. They're conserving their energy, they're enjoying the sun. If they can't get a good spot on the dock, they're kind of in the water with their flippers out of the water thermoregulating to catch and conserve heat. But the proximity to people means these waters are full of dangerous debris. There is a whole lot of different types of fishing gear that can pose a danger to marine mammals here in British Columbia. There can be fishing line, remnants of net, there can be fishing lures, lead components. They might be playing with gear and then it gets them trapped on them. Once that loop goes around their neck and slides down their body, gets kind of trapped by the way their hair works, and it's not coming off. There they are, there's a bunch right there. This effort really is primarily an animal welfare and humane response, but sea lions are upper-level predators and they are important for controlling all sorts of other species of animals. They are very much a very important part of a healthy marine ecosystem here in British Columbia. It takes a well-trained eye to spot an entangled sea lion in the crowd. We see him. This is the one with the black banding? I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it's like a nasty big wedge. He's in this group here. It's an adult male that looks to be around 350 kilos. Fishing equipment is designed on purpose not to break down. I mean, it's used in saltwater, it's used to haul through heavy loads. And then as the animal keeps moving and growing, that line starts digging in through the skin into the blubber and into the muscle as well, and then it's a real problem. With the target in sight, the next step is for Dr. Marty to dart him with a tranquilizer. He's the only vet in Canada licensed to take the shot that delivers the sedative. Right now he's behind that big, big guy there. You can see his head kind of wagging back and forth, I think. They inch their way toward the dock to avoid scaring the sea lions into the water. He's coming this way. The team needs to get eyes on the target as quickly as possible and keep it in sight. I see bubbles right there. The clock is now ticking on the tranquilizer, which takes around 12 minutes to take effect. If that happens while he's in the water and the team isn't there to hold his head above the surface, he could drown. He's right here. Can you see him? Right here. The sedative is slowing the sea lion down. Rescue Centre manager Lindsay Ackhurst tries to draw him alongside the boat so they can go to work on him. Dart's still in him. Did you get him? Yeah. You got him still? Nope. He isn't giving in without a fight. Yeah, you can get it. You go. Just like that. It's already been quite a bit of time since the dart went in and this sea lion is not going to sleep like he should. Right here. He's over here. Yeah. Nope. He might be too mobile for us. I got a bad feeling this dart's not going to work. I think we're done. He's diving really well. I'm a bit worried that he was really too amped up. Adrenaline or epinephrine, as it's called, can actually out-compete our drug and the animal can work himself through the sedation. They can work themselves out of it, which is a disadvantage, but we're not pushing our chances here. It isn't safe to dart the sea lion a second time. It's too risky. We've got three different drugs in him, so adding more drug to that puts us into a really kind of unpredictable zone and I'm not comfortable with that. Making the decision to reverse this guy. Even though this is a pretty active entanglement, this sea lion is going to be fine. It's not causing any serious damage and we've got a lot of time left to respond to this. We'll definitely be back for this guy and next time we'll get him. North of Vancouver, veterinary technologist Kendra Lukow has a bizarre rescue situation on her hands. Hey, Linz. I am just driving home to the rescue centre now. I have the turtle with me. So we got a really unusual call this evening about a sea turtle in Port Alberni, which is not something we usually expect to receive a call about. How's he doing so far? He's in pretty bad shape. I'm not hearing a whole lot of breathing from him. He's pretty lethargic. He's not moving a whole lot. This turtle is a long way from home. He's an olive ridley sea turtle that should be with the rest of his species roaming the tropics. Somehow he swam an astonishing 3,000 kilometres north to the innermost reaches of Vancouver Island's Alberni inlet where he was discovered hypothermic and barely responsive. Because this turtle is in really critical condition, we're not putting him straight into water. He's just going to go into the tub with a mat in it. It's really soft for him to be lying on and that's why we're lubricating his shell and his skin as well since he's not in water. I know. Sorry, buddy. His head is barely moving. His eyes are sort of opening and closing. Hopefully over the coming days as we warm him up, we'll start seeing more of that. Olive ridley sea turtles are a vulnerable species and each year their numbers dwindle. Humans collect thousands of unhatched turtle eggs for food markets. Some fall victim to boat strikes or become tangled in commercial fishing gear. Every turtle's survival is vital for preserving the olive ridley species. I've just arrived here at our marine mammal rescue centre. Kendra is back with this turtle. Hi, buddy. What we have here is an olive ridley sea turtle. This is an animal that does not belong here in British Columbia. It's an animal way out of its range, normally found in tropical waters. That means that this animal has been cold stunned. When a sea turtle like this guy is cold stunned in freezing cold water, they can't eat. Their body systems basically shut down one by one. They cannot sustain themselves. They can't swim. So they will surely die if they are not rescued. Hey there, big fella. Kind of a big adventure you're having, huh? It's really, really important to warm these guys up in a really slow manner in one to two centigrade increments per day. The last thing you want to do is cause more organ damage. Getting cold is bad. Getting warmed up too fast is way worse. Uh, let's see. This won't take too long, guy. It'll be okay. I hate seeing a sea turtle look like this. You know, they don't really have a bad bone in their body. I just really want him to turn around. The goal with this guy, get him as healthy as possible and make sure that he can survive when we release him, which is the ultimate goal. Hey there, big fella. We'll get you fixed up. Next morning. Thank you so much for doing this. Lindsay and Emily are at the Vancouver Police Department's Marine Unit dock. They're hitching a ride to a nearby island to rescue a harbor seal pup reported to be alone and in distress. Just got a call about the pup. He's on a private small island that has no access to it. Their destination today is 20 kilometers northwest of the city, Paisley Island. Harbor seals inhabit the length of the British Columbia coast. They hunt for fish and squid in offshore waters, coming on shore to rest and breed. Lindsay speaking. We are just approaching the south side of Bowen Island. So we'll be there in about 10 minutes or so. Yeah, if you can send the GPS coordinates, I mean, obviously you'll be able to see us. Okay, great. Thanks so much. We'll see you in a bit. A family spotted this orphan pup on the beach not far from their house and called the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre for assistance. On the south end of the island, there's a bay. Inside that bay, there's going to be two docks. Seal pup is reported to be just east of the eastern of the two docks. We've just seen some pictures of the animal. Very small. Very dehydrated looking. And obviously the people are very concerned about this animal because it has been there for an extended period of time. Now there's the dock. Hi. Hello. We made it. So whereabouts is this little muffin? Is that that little black log that we see? Yeah, we spied him. Okay, we'll have a look. According to the family, this nursing pup's mother disappeared days ago, leaving it stranded with nothing to eat. Hi, friend. Hello, friend. There we go. Go for it. I got waterside. All good? Yep. Yeah. I know, friend. It's okay. So tiny. There you go, friend. That is one tiny seal. Holy cow. I think it's lucky that we got to come out today because she's really small and really weak. Poor pup. Let's get you back. When the family first noticed the lone pup, they contacted the rescue centre, who told them to keep their distance to avoid stressing it. One of our biggest things that we do at the rescue centre is outreach. So teaching the public on what to do when they see these marine mammals. They're seeing a pup on the beach. They feel that it needs some sort of care, but usually the mom's just out foraging. And so talking to those people, educating them, is one of the biggest things that we do. It really is the best day of my life. Thank you guys so much. Thanks for the call. Next stop for this pup is the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre. Bye. Thanks, guys. Here, it joins a rotating cast of fellow seal orphans being nursed back to health and prepared for release into the wild. I love harbour seal pups. I'm kind of like the crazy harbour seal lady. I could literally talk about them for hours. They're really interesting species. Even though they look a lot alike, they do have varying personalities and they are unique from one another. They hold a little special place in my heart. It's a girl. Wait a minute. Where are you going? So this pup has been named Olive by the family that called her into the centre and it's stuck. So Olive she shall be. Like Olive, every pup here is an orphan. Some of these rescues lost their mothers to ocean predators. Others were left behind when their mothers were scared off by dogs. Some, like month-old Ryla, were found with terrible injuries. Ryla is a harbour seal that came to us quite a few days ago. And we had to essentially take out what was left of her eye. Her eye had been really badly damaged. Hold on little lady. She's probably been attacked by a dog or another seal. With Ryla's x-ray looking good, Dr Courtney Pace checks the stitching on the seal's left eye socket to make sure it's healing properly after her recent surgery. How's it look? How does it look? How does it look? It actually looks better than it did. Yeah, I think just because it drained. A little bit of suture breakdown. Not unexpected with that degree of yuckiness in the eye. But I think it's like just one of those like grab bites and pulls. But yeah, it sort of punctured that eye which caused everything. It's going to have a little bit more of a scar than we'd like, but that's okay. All good. Now is the scary part. Just make sure there's air moving. Little monkey. I'm a real tactile guy. I like to see, feel, smell. It's very reassuring to me if I feel air moving out of her. Yep, it's all good. Yeah, she's just getting rid of a lot of CO2 right now. So she's huffing and puffing. I know, I love her. Is she your baby? She's pretty with it. She is good. Monitor outside for a little bit? Yeah. Her surgical scar is healing, but Ryla isn't out of the woods yet. It's really important that we release animals that have a really good chance of survival when they're back out in the wild, having to forage, having to avoid predators. One-eyed seals do okay. A seal that's blind is not a releasable animal. So now that Ryla only has one eye, we have to be really, really careful that nothing happens to her good eye. Beautiful. Get your puffer out of there. Dr. Marty is also the head veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium. Here, his daily caseload extends well beyond local marine life. I think one of the coolest parts of my job, especially here at the aquarium, is that I work with so many different species and there is absolutely that deep, heartfelt sense of making things right for an individual animal that's been placed under your care. Lately, staff have noticed that a Jamaican fruit bat named Ruth is having trouble flying. And she's shying away from the other bats, which isn't normal. So she's off to Dr. Marty for a look-see. Here she is. Okay, so what's happening? Uh, Liza found her this morning when she went through her tank checks and she's are lower on the ground. She has some kind of inflamed wing tips. Okay. We have ourselves a female bat found this morning not flying quite right, a little bit low. When the gang looked at her, she definitely has some some wounds on her wing tips and her digit tips. And so we're going to do a big physical exam now. The Jamaican fruit bat is native to the Caribbean, Central America, and Northern South America. It's a nocturnal feeder with a distinctive nose flap to help it sniff out fruit in the dark. What do you got in your little hands? Just have to modify his anesthesia mask. Batsy, batsy, batsy. I love these guys. Okay, I'm turning her back on. Ruthie. I am not seeing a whole lot right off the bat. Certainly she's older. Hey, look at her teeth are all ground down. We're gonna put the mask back on just so she doesn't wake up and fly away. So I don't like all these little pink and inflamed areas on the toes. Kind of see those. I think that's what Siobhan was noting for us as well. X-rays? Yeah. Is that okay? Yeah. Dr. Marty suspects Ruth's been making some hard landings lately. And that's got her fingertips swollen and infected. He's looking for anything that might be affecting her flying. I don't see anything wrong with the bones. Everything looks really nice. No obvious fractures, which is excellent. So we will just go ahead and treat those tips of her fingers and hopefully that's the problem. Okay. X-rays, you got that. Do you want like 0.02? Yeah. Dr. Marty prescribes antibiotics to treat her infected fingertips. And anti-arthritics to help the aging bat fly more comfortably. I see she's shivering a little bit, which means she's starting to get light and she's starting to thermoregulate on her own, which is really good. Oh, little movements. She's cute. So I'm hopeful that the antibiotics and the meloxicam will turn her right around. I mean, I know all of our bats are getting old. So lots of little things can be going on and she's already lost all of her hair, which probably means she's got some some hormonal thing going on. Thanks, guys. Bye, Ruthie. Bye, Siobhan. At the rescue center, little Olive the harbor seal is being fed a high-fat formula mixed to replicate the milk she would have received from her mother. She's looking pretty good this morning. She'll start getting some more nutrients. We'll gradually start increasing the amount of formula so that we can start really getting some calories into her. Beautiful. Thank you. Nearby, older pups are learning to eat like adults. What that means is that they're eating fish on their own and they're in those pools right now to compete for fish against obviously their cohorts. Once they've reached a certain weight and they're doing really well, then we'll hopefully be able to race them back out into the wild. One-eyed Ryla was recently paired with Ona, who also has only one fully functioning eye due to a defective cornea. But Ryla's been pushing her new roommate around and hogging all the fish. How long have these guys been in the pool together for? Not long. Like a day? Not even? They've had probably like six feeds with each other. Okay. So like two days. So I'm a little concerned because Ryla seems to be a little bit more dominant. She often eats all the fish and then Ona will just back right off and suckle her flippers. When she is in the pool with Ryla, there is a lot of splashing and flippers swatting at each other. The two battling pups don't realize the risk they're running. Oh boy. Um, I mean obviously it's concerning. Both of them have one decent eye left. So I think separating them at this time. The plug is being pulled on this duo's pool. Ryla is being moved elsewhere. Just as the water runs out. She gets in a parting swat. Hey ladies, get along. Come on. You okay? Yeah. Ryla's being sent for a time out in a pool of her own. For her eyes sake, she'll need to treat her next roommate with a little more respect. Aw, she likes it. Bubbles! The next day, the team is back in the field responding to another report of a sea lion in distress. Check, double check, triple check. They're in the logging community of Powell River, 170 kilometers northwest of Vancouver. What we're here to do today is rescue a California sea lion, but this one's really different. This guy has an arrow sticking out of his back. I've never seen this kind of injury here in British Columbia. I don't know why anybody would ever want to harm an animal like this, but they do. A harbor pilot takes Dr. Marty to the log boom for a closer look. Like it could be right into his lungs where that is. It could be embedded in him pretty deep. I bet he's been like that for weeks. I'm really worried about his general condition and that kind of animal poses an even higher risk with anesthesia. This is going to be tricky. We're going to ask Archie, the sidewinder boat driver here, to take us out to the log boom and see if we can get really close to this animal to get a good shot with the dart. Just want to make sure that I can get as clean a shot as possible and not disturb him. It's going to take about 12 minutes for him to go to sleep. I really hope he stays on the log boom. If he doesn't, this is a tough area to work in. If he goes in the water, we've lost our opportunity. We will not get another one. The sea lion's too weak to move, but he's too big for anyone else to move either. Archie's going to try and tow that bundle to the ramp, to the sort of rocky outcrop, where we'll get one of the machines to help us unload him and put him into one of the cages with us. On approach, Dr. Marty sees it's not an arrow in the animal's back, but something just as deadly. I think it's a crossbow bolt. I can feel it moving around. This wound is badly infected. There's a lot of damage here. I think that thing's quite superficial now. I could probably just pull it out. That's it. It came out relatively easily, mostly because it's been there for so long, but obviously the damage has already been done. He needs to go to the rescue centre for treatment. The question is, how? Now we have to roll him back a little bit. Yeah. The harbour pitches in its crane, usually reserved for moving logs. This is his heavy part. You're good. Everybody's good. After that, it's all hands on deck to hoist the unconscious animal into the van. It's time to bring him to the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre and the real work begins. Thank you so much, everybody. So great. A few days later, the new patient has been named Archie after the harbour pilot who assisted in his rescue. His crossbow wound's been patched up and looks to be healing nicely. Archie himself is moving around pretty well. It's been some massive injury to him, but I'm less and less worried about a spinal cord injury. But the crossbow wasn't his first brush with human aggression. Somebody decided to shoot him with some birdshot and that's the pellets. Removing the pellets is too risky and Dr. Marty is confident Archie can live with them. But the birdshot has had a terrible effect on his vision. Shotgun pellets like that, even if they don't go right through the eye, they can end up causing a cataract just because of all the inflammation and damage. Archie has advanced cataracts in his right eye that will seriously affect his ability to hunt. Talking with our ophthalmologist, we thought that there is a good chance that if we remove that lens, we'd restore some vision to that eye. So actually put Archie back better than he came to us. Archie is a go for eye surgery. But getting a hulking sea lion into the operating room is easier said than done. So today we're going to put the whole team to work. It's a big procedure. There's going to be a lot to coordinate. The first step is to tranquilize Archie. Dr. Marty is taking this opportunity to pass on his darting skills. And we're at 15 megs. All right, load her up. Today we're actually going to let Dr. Hannah Drum, our veterinary fellow, take the shot. You're getting like 15 of those? No, 20. Oh, yeah. We have a tremendous veterinary fellowship program where we bring really talented young veterinarians here for a year. Starts the road to specialization for these guys. They go on to do incredible things in this field. So you've got an armed dart now. You're in charge. We're going to safety it in your weapon. Yeah, good. Excellent. Beautiful. Okay, check your safety. The hard part is loading the dart, knowing how the gun works, learning all that stuff. That's really important for her to learn as she goes on in her career. With the dart gun loaded, Dr. Marty briefs the team. Just a quick run through. We just have a couple people out there for the dart, most people standing back. And then we'll dart and then we'll let them chill out. Full 12 minutes, anesthetic machine is out there, ready to go. And hopefully we can sneak the machine around them. You don't want to shoot this way or that way because it has to go across water. So honestly, I would just pop them right there. They reduce the gun's power for the close range shot. Yeah, don't let them look at it. That's good. And any time. Yep. Yep, good. It's really good. Yeah, you're good. The team wheels an anesthesia machine to Archie's cage. Once he's asleep, they'll use it to make sure he stays that way for the operation. Majority of our patients are less than 10 kilos when they're coming in and this animal came in at over 300. So huge difference for us to be doing something like this. There's always risk of anesthesia. There's no two ways about it, particularly for a big adult animal. Oh, you woke him up. Like the Cowichan Bay Sea Lion, Archie resists the tranquilizer. It's another five minutes before he surrenders. Let's put that down to three. A modified traffic cone becomes an anesthesia mask to fit over the big animal's snout. Biggest risk for something of this size is of course safety for us. We are working with a very large animal. Not only is that a wild animal, but also when he is anesthetized, we do have to carry him. We're carrying him through an area that's quite slick. Everybody good still? I think that was a breath. Good. Keep calling for me. I like it. I love it. Yep, breath. Anesthetic can trigger the dive reflex in sea lions, which stops their breathing. We're working with a lot of medications that are working against us at times too. So really working together is huge. Awesome. All right, we'll try and intubate him fairly quickly. One, two, three. Veterinary ophthalmologist Dr. Jackie Pierce will do the procedure. Archie is too big. He's a 300 kilo sea lion, so just a little over 600 pounds. He would not be able to be lifted onto the operating table. It's a huge challenge because we had to do him on the floor. Okay, do you want us to roll something under his head? Yeah, maybe. I have a bunch of... Hey Renee, can you grab me? There's a couple of cylinder towels down there. Those are perfect. Can I hold this in there? You can do whatever. You position him whichever way you want. I did some practice. There's a lot of crawling around on the floor and positioning at my workplace where I received quite a bit of ridicule, but it was worth it. Sea lions have evolved large eyes capable of gathering extra light in the underwater gloom. This helps them see better for hunting and avoiding predators. Pack is safe. It's good. Hopefully, today's procedure will give back much of what was taken from Archie. Heart rate still 63. Dr. Jackie makes a small incision in the sea lion's cornea. Jackie, you're good? Yep. Back to 1.5. She carefully removes the clouded lens tissue underneath. Good chest expansion. Thank you. All right, and that's the lens. It won't restore full vision, but he will be able to hunt. It's a fairly standard procedure. It takes about 40 minutes to an hour. It's pretty routine, so no complications, which is good. Okay, we're good. With someone like him who does have a limited eyesight, we're hoping that the procedure will increase his chances of survival out in the wild. So Archie seemed to be recovering fairly normally, and then all of a sudden he just went down. He stopped breathing and his heart rate is slowing down. We've got an anesthetic emergency. We've got to re-intubate and start breathing for him. What's really awesome is the team is always ready for things like that. I'm not even looking at what's going on behind me. Things are just being given to me like they should. We start the ventilator. We're breathing for him. Dr. Marty has to be sure the sea lion is breathing on his own before they can leave him to recuperate. Stand by. I know. Then all the teamwork pays off. That was him. He's definitely breathing on his own. He's out of that crisis. All right, we're gonna take that out. That was a really good job, you guys. That was excellent. A little more difficult than I thought. Hi, Goof. Archie wakes up to a more vivid world. Now he needs to rest and regain his strength. At the Vancouver Aquarium, the rescue center's recent sea turtle arrival is slowly but surely warming up in the special pool that regulates his body temperature. He's here at the aquarium now. He's been transferred over. He is progressing really well. As we've warmed him up, he's become more active. This 10-year-old male has been named Bernie after Port Alberni, where he was discovered a week earlier. What we really think happens with turtles that wind up in these northern areas is that they get kind of cut up in currents that are going the wrong direction. And at some point they just can't function at that sort of low temperature. So they just become progressively weaker and weaker. Sort of at the mercy of this current wherever it goes. But as Bernie's been warming up, another problem has reared itself. Bernie is floating. His back end is floating too high, essentially. He can't really dive as well as I'd like to see him dive. He's keeping that back end quite raised. All of Ridley's sea turtles are primarily carnivorous and often feed on bottom dwellers like sea urchins and crabs. If he floats like this and it doesn't resolve, he won't be able to forage correctly. He won't be able to get to food. To figure out what's causing Bernie's backside to bob, the team is going to take x-rays. But first, a quick blood sample to check his metabolism and see if his organs are functioning properly. All right. Sorry, handsome man. Good job, Bernie. So there's definitely some gas pockets where there shouldn't be. I can't quite tell where they are based on just these 2D x-rays. We got to go for CT and figure out where it is. Oh, he's leaving. Save the turtle. Okay, ready? I'm going to supervise. The aquarium doesn't have a CT scanner that produces the three-dimensional images Dr. Marty's looking for. But a nearby veterinary hospital does. Bernie has air bubbles trapped in the membrane surrounding his lungs. While he was getting cold stun, maybe he was trying to breathe really hard, and that caused gas to escape out of the lungs and kind of get caught in that tissue around the lungs. What we want him to do is to start dissipating that gas. So that gas should normally just kind of go through the tissues and make its way out. He's got a good chance of clearing it, so let's give him a chance. In the meantime, the team is helping Bernie regain his appetite with fish fillets and squid while keeping a video diary of his progress. Eating is kind of the the final step in recovering from a cold stunning. So we're really happy that he's finally eating some food. And in a few days, he starts to dive again. Bernie has a bit of a proud air to him. Any photo that you see of him, he's sort of holding his head up really proud. I think he's proud of his grumpy old man-ness. Oh, he's gonna get you. Oh, he's so mad. This guy's got a lot of personality. I am just so happy that he's doing so well. He likes his waterfall. In a seal nursery, it's been four weeks since little Olive was found in rough shape on Paisley Island. I'm pleased to say that Olive is actually doing a lot better. She's not 100%. This girl is still having a hard time putting on weight. Her next step is to wean her onto fish and get her off the formula. So I think that's where we'll go. She is a little fighter, that one. Not far away, one-eyed Ryla is ready to return to the wild. Ryla has all the makings of a great wild seal. To be honest with you, she's never taken any guff from any of the other seals. When we tried to pair her with other seals to create more competition and some kind of, you know, camaraderie in the pools and things like that for resources, she was having none of it. We've had to keep her by herself in a pool and that's just the way that she seemed to like it. But boy, it sure is awesome to see her now and to see how much she's thriving and she's going to be an awesome wild seal. I just know it. Today, the team is taking Ryla and five other release-ready seals to a quiet cove north of Vancouver, where they'll be returned to the wild. Days like today are really what it's all about. To watch these animals from start to finish and be able to to ship them back out makes it all worthwhile. Come on, little lady. We've got six seals heading out, including Ryla, who's had a whole lot of work done and the really, really bad eye. She's extra special to me just because she came in with this eye injury and she's my very first marine mammal surgery patient. She's a little sassy, which I appreciate. You know, she's independent. She knows what she wants. She's actually been a staff favourite. She's been very smart. She's been very tough and she's hit every milestone through the rehab process with flying colours. I don't think Ryla skipped a beat today. She just headed right out of that crate and off she went. She knew exactly where she was going, which is a great feeling. It's always a big deal to release seals. It's always the culmination of a whole bunch of effort to get these guys out the door and into the wild, which is what we do. It's awesome. At the Vancouver Aquarium, three weeks have passed since Dr. Marty prescribed antibiotics and anti-arthritics to Ruth, the Jamaican fruit bat. Yeah, I look way better. She's all healed up. So Ruth is now eating well again. She's very, very ravenously hungry, which is perfect for a bat. They actually usually eat about their whole body weight in food every day. So if they can't keep that up, that's going to be a problem. So she's right back to normal with ravenously eating food, which is perfect for her recovery. Ruth is showing an increase in her movement. She's socializing with our other rehab bats, which is also really key for a bat. Bats are actually quite social animals. So I'm happy that she's back with her family. Early next morning. Let's get some light. Hey, buddy. Good morning. It's gonna be a big day. You have no idea. You're like, where's my breakfast? Bernie is back to his old self. He's all warmed up and diving like a champ. SeaWorld in San Diego has agreed to take the turtle and release him off the coast of Southern California. It's going to be a big deal. A lot of moving parts, all sorts of things that came together. We got to go, go, go. It is not easy moving a turtle across an international border. These guys are endangered. They're very protected. We need a whole lot of paperwork to make this work. And it's all a lot of people doing a good thing for good animals, trying to protect them and make sure there's no illegal trade. That means us good guys have got to also be really on the up and up and make sure everything is right to the mark, including who's driving the car and the license plate of the car. It's a big deal. Everything aligned just a day and a half ago. We've had less than 24 hours to get everything rolling. Well, here we are. We want to be as efficient as possible. We don't want Bernie to be out of the water for too long. The more chance of muscle damage and pulmonary damage. So we just want to be as efficient as possible with him. Right now what I'm doing is I'm just putting lube on his eyes just to protect him for the transport. And just slide that down. We need to take Bernie from Vancouver to Seattle where he's going to meet a plane. And that plane is going to take him to San Diego. So our job bring Bernie through the border to Seattle. Getting him back to a warmer climate down south will definitely be better for him and better for the species as a whole. Dr. Marty will escort Bernie across the border to Seattle where a plane to San Diego is waiting for him. All right, turtle. It's just you and me for a little bit. Ooh, doggy. And I can hear him breathe. That's it. There it is. That's the breath. I like that. There's a really great organization that's helping us out today. They're called Turtles Fly 2 and they're kind of a group of voluntary pilots that fly turtles, endangered species, and do a really great job moving animals around for free, which is amazing. This plane is heading to San Diego. It's going to be met by the staff of the SeaWorld San Diego animal rescue team. Folks at SeaWorld are going to give him a final check, then make sure he's really healthy, eating, diving normally, attach a satellite link transmitter to him, and then bring him out a few miles off the coast and let him go. Back at the rescue center, Archie the sea lion is fully recovered from his ordeal and is ready for the next big step. Today is a huge day. It's Archie's release day. This guy has gone through so much. He's been hit with a crossbow bolt. Someone shot him. He's had so many problems inflicted by humans. But then this awesome group has come together and really helped this guy out. It's going to be such a huge day. Okay. All right, guys. One, two, three. The team takes Archie to a secluded beach where he can re-enter the wild in peace and quiet. This is a great spot for Archie. It's a spot where sea lions routinely come to. He doesn't have far to go to interact with other sea lions. It's also a great beach for us to get truck access because he's a big guy and it's hard for us to move him very long distances without being able to get the truck close by. And like Bernie, he's been fitted with a GPS locator so the aquarium can track his movements and learn more about stellar sea lion behavior. Archie has bulked up to 350 kilos, so it's all hands on deck to wheel him safely down to the water's edge. I'm ready. He's a little hesitant at first, but it isn't long before instinct kicks in. That way. You know, it's really moments like these, it brings it all home. Being a little kid, wanting to be a veterinarian and then going through all that stuff, working with this incredible team, it all just comes down to this moment and it's just so great. Yeah! So good! So fun!