On Thanksgiving night, Gobble the sea lion – affectionately named after the holiday – was found underweight and stranded on the Silver Strand State Highway (SR-75) by the Coronado Police Department.
After weeks of rehabilitation under the SeaWorld Rescue Team’s care, Gobble was rereleased into the ocean on Jan. 18.
Coronado Police Department officers were first made aware of the emaciated sea lion pup after a call from passersby.
Due to the department’s required animal field training, the officers came prepared with a large dog crate to transport the wandering pup back into the ocean. It was then that they realized Gobble wasn’t quite ready to return to the water.
“Our officers carried her down to the ocean water and tried to get her out of the crate. They had to kind of dump her out and then she went a couple of feet, turned around, and bolted back into the crate,” said Public Information Officer for Coronado Police Department Lea Corbin. “We didn’t want to re-release her out of the crate knowing she was going to go right back into the highway.”
SeaWorld Rescue Team responds
The SeaWorld Rescue Team quickly responded and took in six-month-old Gobble that same night. She weighed in at around 12 kilos – about half the weight of a typical sea lion her age.
“Something was definitely going on with Gobble. Marine animals will strand when they are not feeling well, if they haven’t been eating, if they are emaciated, lethargic, or if they have an infection or wound.”
-Supervisor for the SeaWorld Rescue Department Jeni Smith
“Something was definitely going on with Gobble. Marine animals will strand when they are not feeling well, if they haven’t been eating, if they are emaciated, lethargic, or if they have an infection or wound,” said Supervisor for the SeaWorld Rescue Department Jeni Smith.
The team believes the sea lion’s trek to the highway had something to do with its then-developing survival skills.
“At some point Gobble was with mom and probably nursed from mom. Mom showed Gobble how to hunt for fish and then at some point either they got separated or Gobble just didn’t pick [hunting] up well enough,” said Smith.
Gobble was immediately brought into the critical care building, an enclosed space where the skinny sea lion pup could retain its strength without wasting excess energy in the cold.
Upon intake, the SeaWorld team got to work assessing the best strategy to safely nurse the pup back to health.
“Based off of how lethargic the animal is, how emaciated, we kind of have a formula we use to give fluids to them, it’s one of the first things that we do,” said Smith. “ If they haven’t been eating fish for awhile, we don’t want to have them start eating it right away, it can be kind of shocking to their system.”
Gobble makes steady recovery
Over the course of eight weeks, Gobble was steadily brought back to healthy conditions.
Progressing through feeding tubes, to shallow pools that allowed the pup to easily hunt for fish, to even deeper pools with other sea lions introduced, the SeaWorld Rescue team monitored Gobble as she began to display proper social and behavioral characteristics.
“Competitively hunting for fish with the other sea lions, sometimes even competing with the birds, we like to see all of that and just normal sea lion socialization,” said Smith. “Sea lions are very social so we try to pair the sea lions with others in the same rehab stage.”
After almost tripling her weight, weighing in at 32 kilos, Gobble was able to return to the ocean on Jan. 18 alongside three other sea lion pups that were rehabilitated alongside her.
The three Coronado Police Department officers who initially saved Gobble from the busy highway were there to watch the pup return to her ocean home.
“It’s definitely a great feeling,” said Smith. “You see the animals come in super down and lethargic, but it’s always a great feeling to watch them bound into the ocean. They all went, all four of them, all together.”
