Dec. 22 (UPI) — A team of marine animal rescuers were called out to a location in Scotland to assist a seal found wedged in between large boulders.
British Divers Marine Life Rescue said on social media that a team was dispatched to Westray, Orkney, on a report of a stuck seal.
Rescuer Tom Hadley told BBC Radio Scotland the rescue was complicated by the seal being trapped “bitey end up.”
“They have got a pretty serious bite,” he said. “What we had to do was put someone in the hole with it, but just out of reach, and distract it with a person waving a towel which meant it could be restrained and we could get it out.”
The team spent hours digging around the seal, and even broke a shovel in the process.
Employees of nearby company Cooke Aquaculture arrived with heavy machinery to lift one of the boulders away.
“Following a quick health assessment and a burst of impatience, the feisty, plump pup was released back into the wild, no worse for his ordeal, and was soon seen joining the onlooking seals,” BDMLR said on social media.
Hadley said the “really fat, strong little seal” wasn’t exactly grateful to its rescuers.
“It was pretty cross with us. They don’t know we’re trying to help, they just see someone trying to attack them,” he said.