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Vancouver Aquarium’s rescue team heading to the small screen

The Marine Mammal Rescue Team will be featured in a new TV series, Wild Pacific Rescue
marine mammal rescue
Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue centre will be featured in a new television series called Wild Pacific Rescue. Photo courtesy Ocean Wise Conservation Association

The Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue centre will be featured in a new television series called Wild Pacific Rescue.

Wild Pacific Rescue will take viewers on dramatic and emotional animal rescue expeditions along the rugged, mountain-ringed coastline of the Pacific Northwest,” Ocean Wise Conservation Association said in a blog post announcing the show.

The show, a six-episode docu-series that will air next spring, will follow Dr. Marty Haulena, the aquarium’s world-renowned veterinarian, and his team as they rescue and rehabilitate injured marine mammals including orcas, sea lions, dolphins and sea turtles.

Ocean Wise Conservation Association, the not-for-profit that operates the Vancouver Aquarium and Marine Mammal Rescue, partnered with Toronto-based production company White Pine Pictures on the series, which was commissioned by Love Nature 4K, a natural history content brand owned by Blue Ant Media.

Ocean Wise is giving Wild Pacific Rescue unique and exclusive access to its Marine Mammal Rescue facility in Vancouver, as well as its rescue operations. On any given day, the rescue team could be disentangling a trapped California sea lion from a fishing net, administering antibiotics to a sick orca from a moving Zodiac, or hand raising an orphaned sea otter pup.

The Marine Mammal Rescue program was started in 1960 with the aim to rescue, rehabilitate and release injured animals back into the wild. It focuses on animals that have been harmed as a result of human activity or interference. Its operations are based out of the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre in Vancouver, a hospital for sick, injured or orphaned marine mammals.

Wild Pacific Rescue will air on Cottage Life channel in Canada, and Sky TV in the U.K., in spring 2021.

@JessicaEKerr

jkerr@vancourier.com