This is the tender moment a pair of cruelly injured young sea lions share a kiss as they are released together into the wild after being nursed back to health.

The two juvenile sea mammals were rescued separately off the same stretch of Argentina's Atlantic coast last month by the Mundo Marino Foundation, or World Marine Foundation.

Video footage obtained from the foundation, Argentina's largest aquarium, shows the pair being released in San Clemente back into the Atlantic on March 4 after weeks of recovery together.

Overjoyed to be free, they race towards the waves and then stop for a moment and nuzzle with their snouts together before the footage ends.

Earlier clips show the cruel man-made injuries they had suffered that needed urgent treatment.

One heartbreakingly squeals in pain as vets clean and disinfect a deep, bloody wound to one of its flippers while rescuers feed it through a tube.

The second seal has an even deeper gruesome cut around its neck where a plastic hoop apparently slipped over its neck as a cub and then slowly bit into its flesh as it grew.

Again, rescuers clean the badly infected cut before giving the distressed youngster an antibiotics jab.

The foundation said: 'These were two juvenile specimens that were rescued in mid-February by the Mundo Marino Foundation.

'One of them was initially assisted in Villa Gesell with a wound in his right fin presumably caused by some element of anthropic origin, that is, by man.

'The other sea lion had been found stranded a few days later by a tourist on a beach in the Partido de la Costa, near the border withPinamar.

'After entering the rescue centre, the veterinarians were able to extract a plastic strap, commonly used for industrial-type packaging, from the animal's neck, which had caused a deep, cutting wound.

'They join the case of a sea lion that, earlier this year, was assisted for presenting a wound on its neck caused by a fragment of a fishing net.'

'As the days passed, from the moment of their rescue, both animals responded satisfactorily to veterinary treatment, showing a good nutritional and behavioural attitude.

'In that sense, they were discharged by a veterinary doctor and returned to the sea during the morning of this Monday, March 4, on the beaches of San Clemente.'