A young grey seal found at Cooper’s Island has been released in Rhode Island after months of rehabilitation.

The seal, named Northlands by Ruby Dill, was set free on Blue Shutters Beach in Charleston yesterday with spectators and media looking on as it returned to the sea.

While the seal pup initially retreated back into his container upon release, he later made his way into the ocean.

Northlands was originally found exhausted and dehydrated on the morning of February 17, and was caught later that day and taken to the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo.

The male seal was flown to the Mystic Aquarium’s animal rescue clinic on a chartered flight last month.

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Sarah Callan, the animal rescue programme manager at Mystic Aquarium, told NBC News that the seal pup spent three weeks at the facility being rehabilitated to ensure he would be ready for release.

“We basically just had to beef him up and put a satellite tag on him so we're able to track his movements post-release,” Ms Callan said.

Ms Callan described Northlands as “one lucky seal”, noting that only five seals had been found in Bermuda’s waters.

Grey seals live in the North Atlantic, and the animal’s journey from the US East Coast spanned hundreds of hazardous miles of open ocean.

Seal strandings are rare in Bermuda, but the island teamed with Mystic Aquarium in 2019 to rescue an adult female that was named Lou-Seal.