Harassment of baby seals, sea lions triples at beaches in one California county
Rescuers saw an alarming increase in “negative human interactions with seal pups” on San Luis Obispo County shores last year, according to The Marine Mammal Center.
Humans interacted with young marine mammals a total of 18 times there in 2021, according to Giancarlo Rulli, spokesman for The Marine Mammal Center. The nonprofit organization is headquartered in Sausalito, where its main hospital is located, but has animal care facilities in Morro Bay and Moss Landing.
Those interactions were evenly divided between young elephant seals, harbor seals and sea lions, Rulli said.
In comparison, the Center’s trained local rescuers responded to six cases of human interactions with marine mammals on San Luis Obispo County beaches in 2020, he said.
Rulli said 90% of the 2021 cases involved very young pups and 40% included actual contact between an animal and an unqualified human.
Those interactions ranged from people crowding around marine mammals to get selfies with them, separating baby seals from their mothers, to poking the animals with sticks, the Center said. Off-leash dogs get too close to a seal, while humans dragged a seal pup by its rear flippers back to the water line, and people picked up a tiny pup.
While some of the people involved may have had good intentions, all of those actions are harmful to the wild animals, the Center said, as well as potentially dangerous and illegal.
Once a mama harbor seal detects human contact has happened, for instance, she likely will abandon her pup, he said.
According to Rulli, very few of the seals and sea lions on San Luis Obispo County beaches actually need human assistance. Most are just waiting to be reunited with their moms, who’ve likely gone for brief, food-foraging swims.
Public reminders about proper behavior are especially crucial now, he said.
The 2022 pupping season for harbor seals has begun on the Central Coast, while juvenile elephant seals can still be found at the Piedras Blancas rookery north of San Simeon. Sea lion pupping season starts soon.
“The public can play a really important role” in helping juvenile, subadult and adult mammals that are sick or wounded, Rulli said.
“Our locals are our eyes and ears on the beaches here,” he said. “We want them to speak up, sharing their knowledge with visitors on the beach… and then calling in to report animals that need help. That will alert local trained volunteers who can help the animals.”
Of all the calls from SLO County folks every year, Rulli estimated, about one in five results in a transport. He said the center receives more than 10,000 rescue calls per year, with about 800 cases treated annually.
The Sausalito Center is currently treating about 120 rescued patients, including 90 elephant seal pups, Rulli said. The remainder are harbor seal pups.
As of midday Tuesday, the Morro Bay triage clinic had one temporary resident, an approximately week-old female harbor seal nicknamed Brie who was rescued from a San Simeon beach late Sunday afternoon.
That’s one of three “hot spots” for rescues in the county, Rulli said, with the others being Avila Beach and Morro Bay. Cambria is fourth on the list.
According to Aliah Meza, operations manager for the Center’s Morro Bay triage clinic, Brie is the 3,000th harbor seal rescue treated there.
The pup was being fed to get her strength up before she travels to the Center’s Moss Landing field office, then continues her trip to the Sausalito hospital.
Why did marine mammal interactions go up?
According to Rulli, the number of documented cases of people interacting with marine mammals more than tripled in San Luis Obispo County during 2021, Rulli said, and doubled elsewhere along the Center’s 600-mile range along the California coast.
“Why? And why now? That’s the question … the mystery element,” Rulli said.
“Clearly, there were more people out on local beaches,” he said, due in part to the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions.
Eric Endersby, Morro Bay harbor director, and Eric Hjelstrom, coastal sector superintendent of California State Parks’ San Luis Obispo Coast District, said Monday that they’re not aware of an increase in local reports of bad human behavior involving marine mammals.
That could be because people who observe animals in trouble may just call The Marine Mammal Center directly rather than trying to track down a state park or harbor official.
Endersby said most of the reports received by local officials involve sea otter pups. The mom leaves the pup floating on the water to “go off foraging, and the pup’s there shrieking for her. People assume the pup’s been abandoned,” which is not the case, he said.
People should not try to help the pups themselves, he said, or generally get too close to the otters.
That behavior, Endersby explained, “has probably increased over the last decade as the otter population inside the bay has swelled from one or two random otters” to large rafts of them, mostly at the South T Pier and near Target Rock.
“On the weekends, our sea life stewards are out on the water,” he said, “running interference.”
The approximately 100 docents with the nonprofit organization Friends of the Elephant Seal serve the same purpose at the Piedras Blancas rookery, home to about 28,000 northern elephant seals.
During peak seasons, the elephant seals’ range can extend beyond the main rookery site along approximately 8 miles of the coastline, according to www.elephantseal.org. Some have been seen further south in the county.
What to do when you see a stranded marine mammal
What should you do when you see a stranded marine mammal?
First, Rulli said, don’t intervene. “Make sure to keep a safe distance and keep dogs on leash and away from the animals,” he said.
Meza suggested using your cell phone camera’s zoom feature to photograph the distressed animal without disturbing it. Also, take pictures of the area where the mammal is and photos of any landmarks that can help rescuers find it faster.
Then call The Marine Mammal Center’s 24-hour rescue hotline phone number at 415-289-SEAL (7325).
The Center’s hotline dispatcher will tell the reporting party where to email the photos.
The Marine Mammal Center
According to The Marine Mammal Center’s website, volunteers have rescued more than 24,000 marine mammals along 600 miles of California coastline and the Big Island of Hawaii since 1975. The group treats and rehabilitates sick and injured animals at its veterinary hospitals until they can be “released back to their ocean home.”
For more information, visit marinemammalcenter.org.
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 9:54 AM with the headline "Harassment of baby seals, sea lions triples at beaches in one California county."
