The air was brisk, the sun shining and the waves were breaking on the sand — as King, the wayward sea lion, returned to the ocean.
The young sea lion, which had spent the past two months on the mend at San Pedro’s Marine Mammal Care Center, briskly flopped his way to the Cabrillo Beach waterline on Friday, March 31, as a couple of dozen onlookers bid him a cheerful send-off.
“Go King!” shouted one spectator watching the sea lion, who in January had wandered, malnourished, into Redondo Beach’s King Harbor Yacht Club, where he was found curled up next to the stove in the warm kitchen.
King, who is named after the yacht club, wasted no time bounding out of his rehabilitation crate on the beach and into the cold Pacific waters that were home. With another recovered sea lion companion — King ws among four total that were released Friday — he bobbed through the waves and into the ocean until he disappeared from view.
“Oh, they’re so happy,” one onlooker said, watching the sea lions dip in and out through the waves on their journey home.
Among the well-wishers on the beach was Pat Light, volunteer membership chair at the King Harbor Yacht Club in Redondo Beach, who was there the night the sea lion was discovered in the kitchen.
“It’s just so exciting to see,” she said of the release early Friday morning.
Light was joined by several others from the yacht club who assisted in King’s rescue. They received a special invitation to be there from the Marine Mammal Care Center, where King has been recovering all this time.
“He looks great,” said Light, who recalled how skinny and lethargic the pup was just a few months ago.
For John Warner, the CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center that nursed King back to health, it was “a joyful day, to be sure.”
It was after the dinner hour, around 9 p.m., on Jan. 26, when King was found. The skinny pup had somehow crawled up onto a dock, then up a ramp and around a back patio to slip inside the warm…
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