Ocean Animal Emergency

NARRATOR: Just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, there is a hospital unlike any other.
FELICIA NUTTER (Staff Veterinarian): This is definitely cutting edge.
NARRATOR: While its patients are bright, appealing and furry, they are also a critical barometer of the decline of our oceans.
This adult male sea lion's neck is entangled in some human garbage. He cannot eat and is quickly losing weight, so a team from the Marine Mammal Center needs to capture him and get him back to the hospital.
SHELBI STOUDT (Volunteer): If he's in your net, we want to try to get him into the bigger net. Our goal is to sneak up on him and surprise him, because no matter how sick or injured the animal is, all it has to do is roll over into the water and we can't get him.
Pull back.
NARRATOR: It's not all that easy. For this sea lion, the story has a happy ending. A month later he is sighted sunning himself on a San Francisco pier, and the entanglement had fallen off. But for hundreds of animals along the California coast, this hospital makes the difference between life and death.
Theirs is an all-out effort to save these animals from our increasingly troubled oceans. High-end veterinary science and a passion for marine mammals, right now on NOVA: Ocean Animal Emergency. PBS Air date: November 25, 2008