A sea lion pup that appeared over the weekend on a stretch of Highway 1 south of Fort Bragg was determined to have travelled over 500 miles from the Los Angeles-area coastline where marine mammal rescuers had set it free almost five weeks earlier. A spokesman from the Marine Mammal Center reported Wednesday the pup has lost all the weight it had obtained throughout a seven-week confinement in a facility.

While on a routine patrol on the highway around 1 a.m., two Mendocino County deputies caught a glimpse of a lost animal strolling sluggishly in shady, thick fog last Sunday. Good thing they stopped or the poor pup would have been caught in a vehicular accident according to the officers. They learned it was a young sea lion in decent shape, but just weighing roughly 20 pounds and with the length of about 30 inches or 2.5 feet which had hiked almost a quarter mile from the ocean. They also noticed that a tag was clipped to the pup's front flipper.

This animal was assumed to have encountered people beforehand and then was treated in a marine-animal rehabilitation project. The sea lion seemed cheerful to have stumbled across the Mendocino deputies as it kept rubbing against their legs like a domestic pet, according to the officer.

The officials communicated with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the staff there recognized the sea lion from its orange tag as the one they had freed from the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in Southern California.

Last Sunday, the pup mounted into the backseat of the patrol vehicle, and the deputies took some photos with their new acquaintance, that includes the sea lion posing with a seat belt, before returning it back to the ocean.

Laura Sherr, spokeswoman from Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, warned that civilians should never touch, approach or try to rescue a stranded marine mammals. The sea lions can be aggressive and if threatened will bite, she said.

"We ask that the public keep a distance of at least 50 feet from the animal and call their local marine mammal rescue facility so that a trained responder can assess the situation and rescue if needed," Sherr told in a written statement.

As of Wednesday, 873 sea lions had been rescued from the coastline so far this year, Sherr added and that number is up from 59 of the same species at this time last year.

Photo: Sara Yeomans | Flickr