A group of people were hanging out at Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth, England, when they saw a large pile of red netting on the shoreline. After watching for a moment, they realized it was moving. Someone was trapped underneath the netting, desperately trying to break free.
Lindsey McInerney
The group ran to the pile of netting and discovered that the trapped animal was a seal. They carefully moved her — still tangled in the netting — away from the rising tide, while others called British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) for help. Luckily, a volunteer from the rescue was already on a different part of the beach, so they arrived within minutes to take control of the situation.
The poor seal was trapped in more netting than her rescuers had ever seen before. She was so tangled and buried it was a miracle she had been spotted at all.
Frankie Sharp
“If she had not been fighting for her life, it may have been the case she would have not been spotted by people who helped save her from certain death,” Dan Jarvis, director of welfare and conservation at British Divers Marine Life Rescue, told The Dodo. “The amount and weight of the net would have stopped her from being able to haul out on land, swim and dive, and so she would have ended up dying from drowning or exhaustion.”
Frankie Sharp
The seal was understandably very distressed when she was found, and the volunteers did their best to work as quickly as possible to free her from her predicament.
“The disentanglement process took a little while because there was so much net to cut through,” Jarvis said. “It was tightly wrapped around most of her body, so a covered safety knife was used to slice through it, and the team [was] then able to unwrap her bit by bit until she was fully free.”
Frankie Sharp
The process took about 15 minutes, and once the seal was free, the team checked her over to make sure she was OK. It seemed she must have only recently become trapped, because she had no injuries and was a healthy weight. The volunteers brought her back down to the water’s edge and released her back into the ocean.
Gabby Beslan
“From the BDMLR volunteers involved to the members of the public who had helped or were watching, there was an atmosphere of great relief that she was rescued, but also shock at the massive volume of net that had encapsulated and nearly killed her,” Jarvis said. “She was incredibly lucky to have drifted ashore onto a public beach where she could be found and helped quickly, otherwise this story would have had a much different and devastating conclusion.”
Dan Jarvis
After collecting the netting the seal had been trapped in, the team realized she’d been tangled up in almost 100 feet of the stuff, which is the most the rescue had ever seen come off of a single seal. It was a shocking rescue from start to finish, and everyone involved was so grateful to be a part of such a happy ending.
“We must also recognise there are many animals still out there who sadly don’t get found or cannot be reached by rescuers to save them, which is why cleaning up our oceans and coasts is incredibly important,” Jarvis said.
