Sandra Lee Saved a Baby Seal's Life

Sandra Lee, girlfriend of Andrew Cuomo and purveyor of recipes for edible garbage, was walking along a beach in Malibu, CA earlier this week when she stumbled across a dying baby seal, reports Page Six. Fortunately for the seal, Lee made a few calls and was able to get “a wildlife rescue team to pick up the pup.” Fortunately for us, the incident is on video.

“Beautiful girls, making a difference, right here, right now,” Lee says of the team as they pick up the seal. In a lengthy post on her Facebook page, she adds:

“The young woman who gently scooped the little seal into a net to transport him to a wildlife rehabilitation center told me she has rescued three thousand baby seals within the past year.”

More and more pups have been showing up on California coastlines this year because of—surprise!—warmer than average oceans. NPR reported on the “record number of stranded sea lion pups” last month.

“We believe that the warm waters are basically pushing the prey items for the California sea lion mothers further and deeper away from the islands,” says Justin Viezbicke, coordinator for NOAA’s California Stranding Network.

That means the mothers are away from their pups “longer than they normally would be,” which leads to hungry pups who become “desperate enough to set out on their own,” which leads to people like Sandra Lee finding them on the beach.

Similar events in 2010 and 1998 were caused by warmer-than-normal ocean waters. But in those years, strong El Niño weather patterns were to blame.

“We don’t have that this year,” Mantua says.

The silver lining is that “the number of dead and dying pups represents less than 1 percent of the total population” of about 300,000. So at least there’s that. And at least Sandra Lee was out of the kitchen.