Newport’s War on Sea Lions

Think of them as amphibious sumo wrestlers. A pack of rowdy sea lions has invaded Newport Harbor, sinking a boat, thrashing docks and -- with their cacophony of barking -- turning residents into sleepless zombies.

In a scene that has played out up and down the West Coast, the whiskered creatures are charming tourists but exasperating local officials, who are studying a far-flung set of strategies to thwart the federally protected mammals.

On Wednesday, the Newport Beach Harbor Commission debated the situation, which has taken on added urgency since 18 sea lions piled onto a 37-foot sailboat and sank it over Labor Day weekend.

The sheriff’s Harbor Patrol has also been inundated with noise complaints.

“A barking dog doesn’t hold a candle to this. It’s like 40 barking dogs -- in surround sound,” grumbled Balboa Peninsula resident Darci Schriber.

For relief, she and her neighbors contemplated painting a small electric boat to look like an orca, complete with piped-in whale sounds to scare off the sea lions.

Seattle tried a similar plan nine years ago after sea lions raided Puget Sound to devour endangered steelhead trout at a fish ladder. The fiberglass whale, dubbed “Fake Willy,” was submerged nearby as an “aquatic scarecrow.”

It didn’t work. Neither did rubber bullets, firecrackers or underwater speakers blasting high-pitched sounds. At one point, mammal wranglers captured several of the sea lions and deported them to an island near Santa Barbara. The lions were back within a week, said Doyle Hanan, a former California Fish and Game official who is working with federal researchers on gadgets to deter the animals, which tip the scales at 600 to 800 pounds each.

Sea lions have always been known for their ingenious and sometimes ornery antics. But this summer, Newport Beach officials noticed a dramatic influx. Nobody knows why the creatures are muscling into the area, but the U.S. sea lion population has boomed over three decades, since Congress made it a crime to kill them.

Roughly 400,000 sea lions now swim off West Coast shores, and 100,000 to 200,000 more ply the waters of Baja California -- so many that anglers complain that the sea lions gobble up a good part of their catch.

In Newport Harbor, boat owners have barricaded their swim steps with chairs and kayaks. And residents of Balboa Peninsula have resorted to squirt guns and sleeping pills to cope with the noisy animals.

Schriber and her husband recently paddled their dinghy toward a group of sea lions lounging on a catamaran and shooed them away by splashing water in the mammals’ faces.

“These animals hate to get wet,” said marine mammal biologist Monica DeAngelis of the National Marine Fisheries Service. “It’s kind of funny.”

Monterey officials exploited that phobia a few years ago after 1,500 sea lions swarmed the waterfront, sinking or damaging 40 boats and stinking up docks with vomit and feces.

City workers and criminals serving community service terms formed 24-hour sea lion patrols, armed with giant squirt guns to scare off the lumbering intruders.

Elsewhere along the Pacific coast, sea lions have attacked swimmers, chomped bodyboards and even yanked people off boats.

In Alaska, according to one news account, “19-year-old Ray Dushkin Jr. was working on his grandfather’s fishing boat in King Cove when a sea lion leaped from the water and grabbed the seat of the young man’s coveralls in its teeth. In a flash, he was pulled overboard.” Dushkin escaped with a small scrape on his buttocks.

Not long ago, humans had the upper hand in this battle of man and beast. But after California sea lions were hunted nearly to extinction, Congress passed the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which made it illegal to kill, injure or -- in most circumstances -- even harass sea lions and other pinnipeds.

Lawmakers never envisioned that the law would work so well, said Matt Streit, a spokesman for the House Resources Committee. In response, a bill has been drafted to allow cities to use nonlethal methods to repel sea lion incursions.

The last time the feds intervened was 1996, when officials ordered the execution of a three-pack of sea lions named Hondo, Bob and Big Frank for decimating Seattle’s steelhead trout population.

The portly pinnipeds, described as “voracious and unrepentant” by the Portland Oregonian, got a reprieve when SeaWorld Orlando offered to adopt the animals.

The creatures were given one-way tickets to the amusement park aboard a Federal Express cargo plane, and then-Vice President Al Gore expressed thanks.

Such efforts would be too little, too late for Gerald Dunlap of Garden Grove, whose 1910 sailboat, Razzle Dazzle, sank under the weight of 18 sea lions this month in Newport Harbor, near the Balboa Pavilion.

Dunlap said he was surprised the Harbor Patrol didn’t phone him to warn that sea lions had targeted his boat. Two days before the vessel went down, deputies boarded the craft to chase one of the beasts from the boat’s cabin, he was told later.

Dunlap paid divers $3,500 to raise the ship back to the surface. He estimated it would cost $18,000 more to replace ruined electronic equipment and make repairs.

Other boats favored by the flippered fiends have been relocated.

And late Wednesday, the Harbor Commission urged Newport Beach’s City Council to ban anglers from hosing off bait and fish waste from their decks while inside the harbor, which can attract hungry sea lions.

Lance Brooks, a harbor tour captain, said he had seen fishermen train sea lions to jump over small docks by feeding them barracuda meat.

Some residents fret that Newport Harbor is heading toward the same fate as Monterey.

“Nothing’s out of the realm of possibility,” said biologist DeAngelis. “Fortunately, Newport Beach is being very proactive, so I don’t think the situation will get as bad as Monterey, but I’m sure the sea lions would love to prove me wrong.”

In December, federal wildlife officials will hold a workshop in San Diego to figure out the best ways to deal with the animals, DeAngelis said.

One option: total surrender.

In 1990, when Pier 39 in San Francisco was mobbed by hundreds of pungent pinnipeds, authorities were initially distraught.

But once they realized it was boosting tourism, pier officials erected a bronze sea lion sculpture and built additional docks for the carnivorous critters to bask on.

Schriber, the sleep-deprived Balboa resident, realizes her plight doesn’t evoke unanimous sympathy.

“People probably think, ‘Oh, you live on the water, you have a beautiful life, quit your complaining, this is part of living on the water,’ ” she said. “But this is far beyond normal-sounding sea life.”

Things got so out of hand this summer that she finally invoked divine assistance. “We’ve been praying: ‘God, please, I need a night of sleep,’ ” Schriber said.

It worked -- sort of. The sea lions recently began congregating a few houses farther down the peninsula. “I told one of my neighbors about the prayers and she said, ‘Thanks a lot, now they’re down at my house.’ ”