Still Alive, Still Endangered : Wildlife: The young sea lion injured by a fishing net became a cause celebre, then disappeared. Now it has resurfaced off the Malibu Pier.

A young California sea lion with a gill net slicing into its neck has returned to a small platform a quarter mile off the Malibu Pier, just when some observers were thinking it might be dead.

“It’s good to see him out there again,” said Phil Campanella, owner of Malibu Pier Sportfishing. The injured sea lion was spotted last week after an almost two-month absence.

Nicknamed Gilly, for the monofilament fisherman’s net caught around its neck, the mammal, thought to be male and to weigh about 150 pounds, attracted widespread attention in February when a sportfisherman saw it on the platform, where anchovies used as fishing bait are stored. Gilly’s plight became a cause celebre after a private rescue group launched a campaign to save it. Television and newspaper reporters dutifully swarmed to Malibu each time an attempt was made. But the young sea lion eluded its captors.

Experts say that unless it can be rescued and the gill net removed, Gilly, estimated to be about 3 years old, eventually will choke to death.

“It’s really just a matter of time,” said Judi Jones, director of Friends of the Sea Lion, a Laguna Beach group whose volunteers tried half a dozen times to rescue Gilly. “As the animal grows, the gill net will eventually cut off its circulation.” A full-grown male sea lion weighs about 600 pounds.

Despite Gilly’s return to the platform, where it rests for much of the day, Jones said the group does not plan to try again.

“We’re out of the picture,” she said. “We’ve done just about everything we know how to do, and I don’t see us continuing to be involved.”

Observers speculate that a fisherman found the sea lion caught in his net and cut the monofilament plastic to free the animal. Remnants of the net are visible around Gilly’s neck, giving the appearance of a collar.

Gill-net fishing near shore is illegal in Santa Monica Bay from Malibu Point to Palos Verdes Point, but fish and game officials say the nets are used farther north by fishermen seeking halibut in the waters off Point Dume. An initiative to appear on the November ballot would ban the use of gill nets within three miles of shore throughout Southern California. Use of the nets is already largely restricted in the waters off the state’s central and northern coasts.

Officials say gill nets take a heavy toll among sea lions and other creatures off California’s coast each year.

“Just in the Malibu area alone, we have about 20 (dead) sea lions wash ashore each year, and many have been caught in gill nets,” said Lt. Jack Campbell of Malibu Baywatch, the county agency that patrols the beaches. “What’s unusual about this one is that he’s alive, and he popped up at a particularly conspicuous location.

“These guys (using gill nets) snag sea lions and dolphins and throw them back in the water. We retrieved an eight-foot dolphin last summer. And in January, we came across a 600-pound sea lion that was cut badly, but we couldn’t catch it, and we never saw it again.”

Jones, whose group rescues four to six injured sea lions a year on Southern California beaches, acknowledged that its volunteers have never managed to capture one of the mammals at sea.

“We’ve tried, just like we tried with this one. But if you’re talking about a small platform surrounded by water, and they’re mobile like this one, it’s extremely tricky,” she said.

During the first rescue attempt in February, two volunteers went onto the platform, and twice waited for more than an hour before trying to throw a net around the animal. But each time, the sea lion slipped back into the choppy waters.

Another time, two members of the group and two county animal control officers briefly got within a few feet of the sea lion, but just as they were about to try to drop a net over him, a small airplane flew low overhead, and Gilly again disappeared into the water.

Besides the Laguna Beach group, volunteers from the Marine Mammal Center in Santa Barbara have also tried to rescue the sea lion.

“The second time the Santa Barbara people drove down here, Gilly didn’t show up, and they haven’t tried again,” said Campanella, who has tried several rescue attempts on his own.

Tom Dobyns, a county animal control volunteer and another of Gilly’s advocates, said that though their hearts are in the right place, would-be rescuers lacked the expertise to capture the sea lion.

“Now, I’m afraid the attitude is, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ ” he said.

Yet Gilly’s supporters say they don’t intend to give up.

“We’ll keep making phone calls, and try to interest someone in putting together a rescue until he’s caught,” Campanella said. “This may be only one sea lion, but when he’s dying in front of you every day, it’s hard to just look the other way.”