GIVING PINNIPEDS A HAND : Volunteers Help the Sick and Injured Make Their Way Back to the Sea

First-timers who volunteer to work at the Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach lose the idea in a hurry that they will be spending their days romping with a bunch of cuddly little beasts straight out of a vaudeville show.

If mucking out the animals’ stalls each morning doesn’t do it, then maybe an elephant seal trying to chomp off a foot will. Or perhaps defrosting a few dozen pounds of herring each day will provide the big wake-up, or having to pounce on an angry, squalling seal and hold it down while someone else takes a blood sample.

“The volunteers here do a lot of hard, grubby, messy, tedious kinds of work,” said Judi Jones, the center’s director of operations. “It’s not glamorous.”

Then again, there’s Bambi.

Bambi, an almost ridiculously cute 8-month-old California sea lion pup with three bullet wound scars, is the darling of every biped at the center. They coo at her, fuss over her, beg to feed her from the herring bucket, fantasize about taking her home with them.

Bambi was found beached at Surfside on March 19, the victim of “some nice person with a gun (who) shot her in the head and the back,” Jones said. “She couldn’t put any weight on her left side when we first got her. The vet didn’t think she was going to make it. But she’s feisty. She’s a fighter.”

The Bambis of the world are the reason for the center’s existence. Since 1977 the staff of the center, which is quartered in a red, barn-like former stable just off Laguna Canyon Road, has played Good Samaritan to sick and injured seals and sea lions, most of which have been found beached and helpless along the Orange County coast. (The center cares for California sea lions and elephant seals almost exclusively; it has rescued only one other marine mammal, a sea otter.)

Between 75 and 100 sea mammals--almost all of them young--are taken to the center each year to be treated, rehabilitated and, in most cases, released into the sea once again. And though many are brought in nearly dead, mostly suffering from natural ailments, 80% to 85% regain their health, Jones said.

Most days, the center is a temporary home to perhaps a dozen marine mammals. However, said John Cunningham, one of the center’s directors, as many as 72 seals and sea lions have been cared for there at one time. Most can be treated, rehabilitated and released within about 2 months, Cunningham said.

Joe Cordaro, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Los Angeles, said there are 67,000 to 107,000 sea lions between Point Conception and Mexico and about 50,000 elephant seals in California waters. Their population off the Orange County coast is fairly stable, Cunningham said, and neither species is considered endangered, but “this year, we seem to be seeing more of the human effects. Gaffings, clubbings, shootings. I would have to say that primarily it’s the fishermen who are probably doing it, but we hear accounts of people who just like to go out and shoot things.”

Since January, nearly 70 dead sea lions have washed ashore on Orange County beaches, and federal and private biologists believe that most of them died after encounters with fishermen--either drowning after becoming entangled in gill nets or being shot by fishermen protecting their catch.

That figure is far higher than the 20 sea lion bodies washed ashore in Orange County last year. Cordaro said his agency estimates that about 2,500 of the animals will die as a result of gill-netting in Southern California each year, but only a small percentage of the bodies will wash ashore. Most are carried out to sea. The high number of beachings this year, he said, probably is the result of halibut gill-netting closer to the Orange County shore.

The deaths have prompted Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) to introduce Assembly Bill 1, which would ban most uses of gill nets in waters heavily populated by marine mammals. The bill currently is being reviewed by the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife.

Most of the animals trapped in the gill nets will drown, Jones said, but sometimes they manage to swim to the surface while still entangled. Cases of that sort at the center “come in spurts,” Jones said. But they produce strong reactions from rescuers.

“I think frustration is not the right word,” she said. “It’s anger, anger beyond words. Seeing an animal in a gill net, cut all the way down to the muscle. A little animal like Bambi that some idiot for no good reason shot. She was in a lot of pain.”

Another source of frustration and anger for the center’s staff is the harm to marine mammals resulting from the recent Alaskan oil spill.

“We’re disgusted,” Jones said. “It’s sort of a helpless feeling because what can you do now? Some of the people in Alaska contacted us to see if we could handle any of the sick sea otters, but I guess they decided that it was better for the animals to stay up there. We didn’t get any.

“We’re just sick about the whole thing.”

The marine mammal center is a nonprofit operation, funded entirely by private donations, most of which come from individuals rather than businesses, foundations or corporations, Jones said. Although the cost of equipment, maintenance, food and other necessities is often substantial (the center’s annual budget is about $60,000), the rent is a bargain. The building and the property on which the center sits are leased to the Friends of the Sea Lion by the city of Laguna Beach for $1 a year.

The center, whose only paid staff members are Jones and one assistant, has 50 active and another 50 to 75 occasional workers, with more on a waiting list. The staff and volunteers have earned a reputation for diligence, thoroughness and the ability to learn quickly.

“They definitely have a good record of rehabilitating the animals they get,” said Cordaro of the National Marine Fisheries Service. “They’re authorized through our agency to tag any animal they release into the wild, and most of our information shows that those they tag and release don’t come back to the beach. So their success rate is pretty high.”

The center can be a noisy place, especially around feeding time, when Jones and her helpers fill their charges’ bellies with as much as 100 pounds of herring a day. In spite of prevailing belief, seals and sea lions do not need to be in water, or even be wet, to survive, Jones said. However, the water is their natural habitat. Consequently, much yapping and barking and doglike howling arises from the converted stalls and fenced pens each morning around 10 a.m. when the doors are opened and the recovering animals are allowed to flap their way into the small swimming pools at the back of the building, where an aquatic workout and breakfast await.

(The racket sometimes erupts spontaneously at night as well. “Some people called the police one night,” said Jackie Berger, a volunteer, “because they thought there was an orgy going on down here.”)

The sea lions and elephant seals are kept in separate pens and swim in separate pools because their temperaments and eating habits can be incompatible, Jones said.

“The elephant seals are a little low on the totem pole of intelligence, but they have their own charm,” she said.

They are more aggressive than sea lions, she added, and can grow to the impressive and intimidating size of about 3 to 4 tons.

Sea lions, however, are highly intelligent and more tolerant of human contact. They are the animals that are often thought of in connection with sea park and circus acts.

The two species have at least one thing in common, however: Their young often suffer at the hands of man and their environment.

The typical call for assistance, Jones said, comes from someone who has found a beached seal or sea lion in obvious distress. The animal may be suffering from a parasitic infection that prevents it from being properly nourished, or it may have a case of pneumonia or some other ailment. It may be very young and unable to fend for itself away from its mother or may not have learned how to eat or find fish. Or it may have survived an illegal attack by someone wielding a harpoon or a gun, or become entangled in a gill fishing net or been wounded by fish hooks. Or the animal’s immune system may have been affected by pollution in the sea, although such effects are difficult to document, Cunningham said.

“We’ll pack up the truck with a cage and hoop net and blankets and gloves and volunteers and go out to find it,” Jones said. “What we try to do is approach the animal without making it run, to get between the animal and the ocean. Two of us will have nets and come at him one on each side and put the open part of the net next to the cage. Eventually, he works his way into the cage.

“It sounds real easy, but it isn’t always.”

Novice rescuers soon learn that they are not dealing with trained animals.

“They’re frightened,” Jones said, “and even if they’re sick or weak, it’s amazing how strong they’ll be. They’ll fight and try to bite you. Their bite is stronger than a dog’s bite. A 1-year-old sea lion pup has a bite as strong as a Doberman pinscher. An adult can crush your arm.”

Often, the animals become much calmer and more tolerant during their rehabilitation at the center, particularly the sea lions. The seals, however, “rarely settle down,” Jones said. The longer they’re here, the worse they get. They’re a handful. We had one here a month ago named Elliot who bit 11 volunteers. We got him out.”

And then, well . . . there’s Bambi.

“You get attached to some of them more than others,” Jones said. “This one,” she said, nodding to Bambi, happily gulping herring out of a volunteer’s hand, “she’s going to be really tough to let go. She’s a big success for us because the vet said she probably wouldn’t survive. But she and we decided she would.”

Another popular sea lion is Lance, who is 2 years old and blind. Jones said the center has kept him for a year in hopes that eventually a sea park or marine life center will take him. For the time being, he has been trained to respond to a whistle at feeding time and will open his mouth to receive a fish after a volunteer taps him on the nose.

And there is Scout, a 9-month-old sea lion recovering from malnutrition as a result of parasites. Today he can catch and swallow herring that are tossed to him from perhaps 20 feet away.

“I just love him,” Jones said, flipping him a fish.

Most volunteers at the center have no experience in dealing with marine animals, much less seals and sea lions, when they first arrive, Jones said. Even Lori Genetive, Jones’ assistant and a marine biology major at Orange Coast College, said that she had only “a basic idea” about the care of seals and sea lions. They learn as they go, with the help of a reference library and advice from two local veterinarians.

Much of the routine medical work is supervised by Jones, a registered nurse. She said that the physiology of the marine mammals and humans is quite similar. In emergencies or extreme cases, however, experts from Sea World in San Diego or the California Marine Mammal Center near San Francisco are consulted.

Jackie Berger, who is completing her 2nd year as a volunteer, said she plans to use her experience at the center to pursue a veterinary career.

“I want to work in rehab,” she said. “I always thought I wanted to do training type work at a place like Sea World, but now my passion is to rehabilitate (seals and sea lions) and get them back in the wild. I don’t want to see them in captivity. Here, the animals come in almost dead and with help from medicine and TLC they go back out in the wild and do what they’re supposed to do. There’s so much satisfaction in that for me.”

It isn’t a grandiose operation, but the satisfaction it produces can be, Jones said.

“We humans have been doing so much to screw up our environment and make it difficult for these animals,” she said. “I feel like if we’re doing something to help even one little critter, it’s making a start.”

COMPARING PINNIPEDS

ELEPHANT SEALS

Ranging in size from 3 to 21 feet long and weighing as much as 4 tons, these mammals breed and molt on land. They can swim at great depths and remain submerged for up to 30 minutes. They lack external ears and have round or flabby faces and rely on strokes of their hind flippers (which cannot be moved forward) in swimming. On land, they pull themselves forward with their front flippers. They are more aggressive than sea lions and not as intelligent.

CALIFORNIA SEA LIONS

Commonly seen in circuses and sea park shows, these intelligent mammals can grow to lengths of 8 feet and weigh as much as 600 pounds. They appear black when wet, but their coat is light brown when dry. They have external ears and more pointed faces than seals and are able to rotate their hind flippers forward and use all four limbs when moving on land. They are generally playful in the wild and more tolerant of humans than seals. Their principal diet, like that of seals, is fish.