During the morning of the 15th January 2005, a call came through to the National Seal Sanctuary about a seal on Porthminster beach, St Ives, a well-used public beach.  The Sanctuary contacted West Cornwall Coordinator Tim Bain and asked him to assess the pup´s condition.  Tim in turn contacted fellow Coordinator Dave Jarvis for help in case an uplift was necessary before making his way down to the beach.

Dave arrived a short while later with Medics Lesley and Phil Jarvis, by which time Tim had found the pup hiding under some decking at the top of the beach.  They were then faced with a problem on how to get the seal out so that it could be more carefully assessed.  While deciding on whether to send one of the Medics under to flush it out or to use a wooden plank to try and encourage it out, the seal solved the deliberation by emerging from its cover to find out what was going on.  It was immediately obvious that it was underweight, and that one of its rear flippers appeared to be injured.  Discussing the pup´s condition with the Sanctuary, a decision to uplift was made, and the pup was duly caught and put in the cage.  Tim and Phil volunteered to transport the pup.

Once they had arrived, the pup was weighed and transferred to an Isolation pen.  When it had recovered from its journey, Dr Glenn Boyle, Head of the Animal Care Team and ACT member Claire Baker performed the clinical assessment, finding that other than having a swollen, possibly infected, rear flipper, the male seal was free of any other injuries.  He is now being rehabilitated along with the other 35 pups currently at the Sanctuary, the first of which were recently released back into the wild.