Sick Sea Animals Find Fast Friend

The first time Karin Wyman, 21, visited the sea lion center in Laguna Beach, she hardly thought it would turn into a career.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said, “but I kept coming back and coming back and pretty soon I was there every day, every weekend. I couldn’t stay away. It was like I was addicted.”

Center’s First Curator

Today she is the first curator of the nonprofit Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Center, a refuge for sick and injured sea animals that beach themselves along the Orange County shoreline.

She was named to the post last October and is the only paid worker, receiving $225 a week to operate the center with a $60,000 yearly budget. She heads a 40-member volunteer staff, many of them trained to present a slide-lecture program on sea lions and the role they play in the environment.

Although hindered by a broken arm from a hang-gliding accident, Wyman recently tended a sick sea lion pup in one of the stalls at the 14-year-old center while she talked about “how really fortunate I am.”

“When I first started here as a volunteer,” said the Laguna Beach High School graduate, who now attends Orange Coast College, “I really didn’t know how important sea lions were to the ecological system, but I’ve really learned a lot.”

She says sea lions are “beautiful” animals. “When I look at them, I see magnificent marine mammals that are part of the whole environmental picture. I’m lucky to be here.”

At the same time, said Bill Ford, a center director and a retired Ford Motor Co. executive, “She gives something back because she seems to establish excellent rapport with the animals. I can talk nice to animals, but I can’t get the same results.”

Laguna Beach volunteer Tanya Pollak, 17, agrees: “Sea lions like her in the same way a dog seems to know who can be trusted.”

Part of Wyman’s knowledge comes from John Cunningham, who teaches marine biology at Laguna Beach High School and is a director of the mammal center. Cunningham operated the center as an unpaid volunteer until Wyman was named curator.

Important in Environment

Wyman agrees with Cunningham on the center’s stand against the Sportfishing Assn. of California, which has long contended that the estimated 80,000 California sea lion population swarms around sportfishing boats and scares fish away. The association is seeking a state permit to use sonic underwater devices to chase away the sea lions.

“I can sympathize with the fishermen,” said Wyman, “but they have to realize sea lions play an important part in the environment and must be protected. Besides, it’s well known that the sea lion is an opportunistic eater. They usually eat off the slow and the sickly fish, not the sports fish.”

And that’s one way humans learn of dangers, notes Wyman. “Sea lions eat the same fish we do,” she pointed out, “so when we discover they’re sick from DDT and PCB, we know that humans are in danger because we’re eating the same food. Sea lions are mirrors of what is going on in the ocean.”

The center, housed in a big red barn leased from the city, includes an intensive care area, a laboratory with an X-ray machine, five inside holding stalls that can hold up to 70 animals, one outside holding area and three small pools. Wyman knows that only 60% of the estimated 500 mammals that are treated there yearly will survive.

The center also treats seals, but the beached dolphins that are occasionally rescued are transferred to Marineland, which treats sea animals rescued from Los Angeles County beaches.

‘Very Tedious Work’

Marineland curator Brad Andrews said the two operations are similar in treating the sea mammals, which usually are extremely ill, underweight and undernourished.

“It’s very tedious work treating sea animals,” he said, “and they do the same things, but on a different scale. We handle a very large volume.”

Tedious or not, “I don’t think I’ll ever tire of this,” said Wyman, who earlier worked as a secretary. “My boyfriend never thought he could appreciate the sea lions but he’s caught up in it. Now he’s a volunteer.”