The other day, a photographer named Rachel was walking down a beach in Waxham, in the U.K., hoping to capture photos of local wildlife. But as she raised her camera to snap a photo of a bird, her concentration was broken by a distressing sound.
It was the sound of someone crying out for help.
Following the cries, Rachel came to find this — a young seal pup trapped between the rocks of a seawall and buried up to his neck in sand.
It’s unclear how the seal came to be in such a desperate predicament, but Rachel could see that he was unable escape it on his own.
“She couldn’t just leave the pup, though she thought that there was no chance of him being rescued,” a spokesperson for the group Friends of Horsey Seals (FoHS) told The Dodo. “Thankfully, she sought help from FoHS rescue team.”
Racing against the rising tide, rescuers from FoHS arrived to the spot and began to dig.
They carefully shoveled away the sand that the little seal stuck was stuck in.
Despite Rachel’s fears that the trapped seal couldn’t be saved, in the end, he was.
“[Our team members] were able to dig the pup out and eventually lift him to freedom,” the FoHS spokesperson said.
The seal’s fur was dirty with sand, but he appeared to be still in good health despite his scary ordeal.
According to FoHS, though the seal is young, he is no longer dependent on his mother and should be equipped to handle life on his own in the wild going forward — barring any future mishaps, of course.
Fortunately, there’s hope to be found in FoHS, and Good Samaritans like Rachel, in case any do arise.