Sea Creatures’ Friend in Death : Veterinarian Plays Detective to Save Future Marine Life

Ray Deiter figures that if he can’t save the whales, he’ll do the next best thing--find out why they died.

In between treating ailing horses, dogs and assorted other creatures, the burly 41-year-old veterinarian has become a self-taught coroner for the whales, seals and sea lions that periodically wash ashore along the coast north and south of San Francisco.

It’s an unofficial position. Deiter, driven by scientific curiosity and dedication to the survival of marine mammals, has examined the remains of 297 animals since 1982.

He divides his practice between his Sausalito animal hospital and the garage of his Bolinas home, which he has transformed into a clinic for clients’ pets as well as a sea mammal morgue, complete with a freezer.

Increasingly, he is gaining recognition in a field that he hopes one day will be to sea life what forensic medicine is to humans. In research to be published by the federal Marine Mammal Commission, Deiter has determined that for animals in which a cause of death can be established, two-thirds died at the hand of man--most by gunshot or drowning after becoming entangled in fishing nets.

In his darker moments, he speculates that pollution triggers some of the disease that otherwise might be viewed as natural. The point of such inquiry, he says, is that if pollution kills at sea it can do the same on land.

“If they can’t survive out there, we can’t survive here,” he says. Bleak as that assessment may seem, he also finds hope: “If you can get this kind of data, you can find out the problem and solve it.”

Deiter’s affinity for marine mammals runs deep. He gave up work as a veterinarian with the prestigious New York Zoological Society a decade ago after he helped capture a beluga whale off the Canadian coast for the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. But while the animal was alive, Deiter said, he felt “like a kidnaper,” and resolved never to do such work again.

“I have some guilt to work out,” he explained.

Deiter does his detective work under the auspices of the California Academy of Science in San Francisco, and is part of a National Marine Fisheries Service network that analyzes dead marine mammals that wash ashore.

“Any stranding is important,” said Jim Lecky, a National Marine Fisheries Service wildlife biologist in San Pedro who is in charge of the network.

The network often provides an early warning system for unusual numbers of deaths of marine mammals, whether man-caused or natural. Off the California coast, the network detected an unusual number of deaths of harbor porpoises in the early 1980s. It turned out that they were drowning after getting caught in fishermen’s gill nets. The work of Deiter and others led to state legislation in 1986 prohibiting the use of gill nets off Point Reyes National Seashore.

Deiter’s reports of shootings have resulted in less swift governmental action. Occasionally, the reports stir hard feelings in the fishing industry, which often gets blamed for the killings.

Commercial anglers with proper permits can shoot animals that interfere with a catch, but only after first trying to scare them. Later, the killing must be reported to federal regulators. However, fishermen rarely report the otherwise legal shootings. Some officials in the National Marine Fisheries Services view the law as being impossible to enforce, Lecky said, adding that he knows of no prosecution for failing to report such a shooting.

Although Deiter’s name can elicit groans among fishermen, Zeke Grader, director of the Sausalito-based Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns., said he has undertaken a “noble cause.”

“Put yourself in his position. He sees a shotgun blast. Some of this is not pretty to look at. I can understand that anger,” Grader said.

“Ray is saying what he thinks. Somebody who has been trained a little bit differently would be more reluctant to say what he thinks. This has gotten him into trouble from time to time,” said Robert J. Hofman, scientific program director for the Marine Mammal Commission.

The commission gave Deiter the only money he has received--$9,500 in 1985--to report his findings. Any controversy, however, is balanced by the worth of his data, which “certainly is more than the amount we paid him,” Hofman said.

Deiter finds the animals with the help of friends and park rangers who telephone when they spot beached animals. Calls come at all hours.

Earlier this month, a ranger called about a dead harbor seal on McClures Beach at the north end of Point Reyes. Upon finding it, Deiter saw small spots of blood in its coat, perhaps caused by shotgun pellets, perhaps by getting banged against rocks after it died. Concluding it was worth taking back to his Bolinas clinic for X-rays, he hoisted the 50-pound corpse over his shoulder for the half-mile uphill trek back to the parking lot. In his garage-lab, X-rays and a necropsy showed that the animal had died of pneumonia.

That afternoon, the phone rang again. This time, the report was of a sea lion north of Berkeley in San Francisco Bay. With his German shepherd, Molly, along to sniff for the corpse, he found it, removed the head and neck, and took it to his Sausalito clinic. X-rays showed 13 shotgun pellets.

“With a California sea lion, I X-ray every head that I find. I’m trying to allocate my own funds, and it seems that California sea lions are the ones that are shot the most. I’d like to X-ray every animal that I see because I’d probably pick up more harbor seals that were shot,” he said.

He finds seals and sea lions once a week. Whales are rare. The last one was in May; a 32-ton gray whale swam into San Francisco Bay and became stuck under a pier where it died. Metal fragments in the animal’s head prompted Deiter to speculate that it had been struck by an exploding harpoon.

As it turned out, the fragments were “indicative of a military type ammunition,” said John Strahle, assistant special agent in charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service law enforcement division in San Pedro.