A BERMUDIAN veterinarian, who helped save the life of a stranded hooded seal, has had details of his rescue mission broadcast around the world courtesy of the National Geographic channel's Today show.

Ian Walker, now working as an associate veterinarian at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, was featured on the show recently after he saved the young pup from certain death.

"Part of my job," he explained, "is to oversee the marine animal rescue programme and in addition, do all the hospitalisation of animals that are on the east coast of Maryland in the Virginia area.

"We regularly have to go and respond to calls for beached whales and seals - however last summer, there were a tremendous number of hooded seals being washed ashore."

Hooded seals are generally found in more northern climates such as New York, Canada and Newfoundland, according to Dr. Walker. The male variety of the mammals are distinctive because of a red sac in their nose, which they blow out to signal when they want to mate or use to show aggression towards other males.

"It's amazing to see that they're even washing up down by the Caribbean," he added. "At first we thought maybe (they were headed that way because of ) disease or an epidemic - that something had put them off their normal course - but as it's mainly pups, I thought that perhaps they'd lost their parents and got lost."

Dr. Walker said National Geographic employees regularly checked in with the National Aquarium to see if there were any newsworthy stories and as such, they learned of the seal's plight.

"Dave Scofield is the co-ordinator of the programme and when a seal comes in, the coast guard on beach patrol will call us.

"We jump in our ambulance and bring it back if the coast guard thinks it will survive, or a vet will go and euthanise it if it's not humane for it to make the three-hour journey it has to undergo in order for it to be brought back to the aquarium for a complete exam.

"They are mainly dehydrated from exposure to the sun although many have had liver issues. They are very agressive. I think it's a survival instinct and so you don't want to touch them. For the most part we use no anaesthetics. It's more of a physical restraint that we rely on to enable us to take blood cultures and do a physical exam.

"We were informed that there was a hooded seal that was stranded off Ocean City which is on the eastern shore of Maryland. He was rescued and brought in for rehabilitation with IV fluids and antibiotics for parasites. The National Geographic watched us get the animal out and drive it to Long Island and release it there. We put a satellite tag on it so we could monitor it, and watched it head south to Virginia before it eventually changed direction and headed north."

Although he was interviewed by National Geographic staff, Dr. Walker said that he wasn't officially notified of the programme's airdate.

"I have now seen it," he said. "Although I knew they were filming, it was only because a friend of mine in Bermuda who spotted it alerted me and my family that it was going on the air."

Dr. Walker studied at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before working at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo (BAMZ) for a year. He then moved to an aquarium in Aberdeen as a veterinary intern.

"At the National Aquarium, we have 14,000 animals and 800 different species," he said, "everything from poison dart frogs to dolphins and as a vet, I have worked on them all at one point or another. Over the last four or five months, we've been periodically getting seals (that have been beached).

"Some years it's turtles. Some years it's whales. We get lots of juvenile turtles. Recently, we got one turtle that had gone all the way to Canada which I think we sent to BAMZ. It depends a lot on the amount of hurricane activity in the Atlantic."