Sea Lions Take Floating Holiday Off Scripps Pier : The Coast: A research platform has become a favorite place for the marine mammals to catch some sun. Unfortunately for them, the fun can’t last.

A batch of new bathing beauties have taken to sunning themselves near Scripps Institution of Oceanography these days--California sea lions that have turned a floating research platform into a favorite R & R spot.

“At first there were only three or four, and then it seemed like there were more every day,” said Kristen Ogwaro, a Scripps administrative assistant who watches the sea lions through binoculars and two telescopes brought into the office where she works.

Avid watchers at Scripps estimate seeing as many as 40 sea lions around the platform, north of the Scripps Pier and about 1,000 feet offshore.

The sea lions provide a chorus of barking for the surfers that dot the waters near the UC San Diego oceanographic institute.

Seven or eight sea lions can fit onto the 8-foot-diameter platform at a time, and others swim around it. Every now and then, a sea lion slides off the side of the yellow float and splashes into the water for a snack.

“Sometimes it looks like they’re waiting in line to get onto the raft, like people would line up,” Ogwaro said.

David W. Skelly, a development engineer in Scripps’ Center for Coastal Studies, thinks the platform is giving the sea lions not only a place to rest but also a food source. It is anchored in about 50 feet of water by four refrigerator-thick concrete blocks that provide plenty of nooks and crannies for squid and small fish, favorite sea lion foods, he noted.

The float on which the animals have been lolling for the past two months is the visible part of an alternative-energy apparatus that the Center for Coastal Studies began evaluating in January for an Oklahoma company, Wave Energy.

Underneath the float and perpendicular to it are two white cylinders, about a dozen feet long, containing a piston device that moves up and down with the waves to generate electricity.

The pleasure that Scripps workers and visitors are finding in the sea lions contrasts with the view taken of them elsewhere in recent months, particularly in Monterey and San Francisco bays, where they have worn out their welcome.

The sea lions’ population, which was just a few thousand in California waters a few decades ago, has rebounded to an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 off Southern California, said Brent Stewart, a research scientist at Hubbs Marine Research Center, Sea World’s independent research arm.

During the breeding season of late May through August, sea lions congregate mainly on San Miguel Island off Santa Barbara and San Nicolas Island off Los Angeles, with smaller colonies on other offshore islands, Stewart said.

Males are much larger than females, and they migrate northward in non-breeding months. Females and the youngest offspring seem to stay closer to the rookeries, Stewart said, but older juveniles often wander. As they wander, any good place for hauling out of the water and resting will attract them, biologists say.

Observers at Scripps say they have seen mainly smaller animals, with an occasional exception.

“I saw one big boy the other morning, at least three times as big as the rest,” said Jeffery Frautschy, retired deputy director of Scripps and acting associate director of the Sea Grant program.

Biologists say the sea lions on the platform probably change from day to day because the animals move around so much.

The wave-energy experiment--the float’s reason for being--is on hold until a crew can go out and repair damage done in winter storms, Skelly said. But, eventually, the experiment will be over, and the float will be brought in.

“My fear is that now we won’t be able to remove the float,” Skelly said. “Because now that float has habitat value, and all the environmental groups won’t want us to remove it.”

But federal officials are unlikely to consider the float’s removal a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, said Jim Lecky, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service on Terminal Island near Los Angeles.

“I don’t think we’re going to give these critters property rights,” Lecky said. “They’ve got plenty of protection already.”