A seal with light brown fur and darker markings around the eyes and nose, held in a clear plastic container outdoors on a sunny day. 4:21
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Seal pup goes from fish school to the sea

Phoenix was a baby seal whose mother left him before she taught him to eat. He didn't think much of the people who came to help. more

Marius, a volunteer with Seal Rescue Ireland, found the pup off the Irish coast with a teammate and brought him to the rescue center. The team kept a close eye on him. "He seemed happy unless we were close to him, putting water on him or lifting him from the boat," Marius said.

A seal pup lies on a pebble beach with its head turned toward the camera. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Phoenix's mother left him before he learned to feed himself.

Lifting him took some care. The advice was to hold him by the body and "just mind your face." He was tiny, only 10 kilos, and should have been much bigger. "He must have been orphaned before his mother taught him how to eat," said Melanie, who runs the rescue.

Phoenix couldn't hunt, so he went to fish school. Lesson one is a solid fish in the bath with him. He's slow to catch on, and one rescuer calls him "such a bad eater" before cheering when he finally gets one.

"Eventually he did get the hang of things," Melanie said. He moved out to the pools with other seals. There he learned to compete for food and to get along with the seals around him.

Two seals swim in a pool beside the edge of a black tarp, with green grass and a fence behind. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
In the pools, Phoenix learns from other seals and holds his own at mealtime.

A few months after he came into care, Phoenix had put on enough weight to go home. Each pup they send back counts, since only about 3,000 to 4,000 common seals are left in Irish waters. One rescuer compares release day to a child's first day of school. "It's big, it's scary, it's this open world."

Every seal reacts in its own way when the cage opens. Phoenix is the first one out, though he hesitates a little. It is a calm day with no waves, and once he's in the water he cruises around. He looks, as one rescuer puts it, "kind of like, all right, I like this."

A seal with light brown fur and darker markings around the eyes and nose, held in a clear plastic container outdoors on a sunny day. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Phoenix was a baby seal whose mother left him before she taught him to eat.

Phoenix isn't alone. A second seal, Proxima, is going home the same day, and he hangs back at first. The team thinks Phoenix going first may have given him the nerve he needed. Then Proxima slips in and follows him.

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