Healing the Sea’s Sick : Marine Mammals Get TLC, but Fishermen Consider Them a Big Pain

Rescuers found the one-eyed California sea lion stranded on a rock ledge near Point Dume.

A passerby had spotted her there, obviously sick, her left eye hideously distended and infected--perhaps from a brush with a fishhook or a shotgun pellet, perhaps from a fight with another sea lion.

The passerby notified county lifeguards, who contacted a Malibu group called Marine & Mountain Wildlife Rescue. Eight volunteers from the group went out and managed to throw a net over the 2-year-old, 160-pound sea lion and put her in a cage. She was then transported to the new Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, where staff members and volunteers began her rehabilitation.

That was two months ago. This week the sea lion--nicknamed One-Eye--is scheduled to be released back into the sea after receiving medical care and a steady diet of fish. Although she has only one eye, staff members at the center think she’ll do just fine.

“I’ve seen a lot of one-eyed animals out there that are able to make a living,” said Donald Zumwalt, director of the care center.

To the staff and volunteers at the Marine Mammal Care Center, the rescue of One-Eye the sea lion and others like her is an unqualified success story, a case of humankind repaying in small measure the debt it owes to the environment in general, and marine mammals in particular.

“When you see them sick, and then you see them get well, it’s a good feeling,” said Peri Wright, 35, a volunteer at the center, where about a dozen sea lions and other pinnipeds--flipper-footed aquatic animals--were being cared for after being found lost or injured on Los Angeles County beaches. “People are killing them by destroying the beaches, and polluting the water. We need to help them because they can’t help themselves.”

“Somebody’s got to do something,” said John Victoria, 28, another volunteer at the center. “There are so many things against them--boats, pollution, disease--that I feel like it’s almost a civic duty to help them.”

The $1.3-million San Pedro center is one of six marine mammal care facilities that line the coast from San Diego to Northern California. Staffed by hundreds of people, mostly unpaid volunteers, the facilities last year collectively rescued about 1,400 seals and sea lions.

The San Pedro center, a joint project of the Los Angeles Unified School District and Harcourt General--the corporate descendant of the company that used to own the Marineland aquatic park in Rancho Palos Verdes--is the first full-fledged marine mammal care facility in the Los Angeles area since Marineland closed in 1987. Until the new center opened in October, marine mammals needing extended care were shipped to Sea World in San Diego.

The care center features outdoor kennel-type cages with swimming pools where ailing seals and sea lions are treated and fed until they are ready to return to their natural environment.

Most of the animals that arrive at the center are pups that for one reason or another--storms, human interference, a breakdown in the maternal instinct--have been separated from their mothers; the rest are injured seals or sea lions that probably would perish if not for human assistance.

Any pinniped picked up on beaches between the Ventura County line and Long Beach winds up at the San Pedro facility. About 75% of them will recover from their injuries or malnutrition and will be sent back to the sea; the remainder, those too weak or sick to recover, either die or have to be euthanized.

Last year, 250 sea lions and seals were picked up on local beaches--far less than the 849 animals rescued in 1983 when storms repeatedly wracked the coast. Since the Marine Mammal Care Center opened in October, more than 70 sea lions and seals have been rehabilitated at the facility, center director Zumwalt said.

However, the pupping season is just beginning, and Zumwalt expects many more stranded pups to be brought to the facility over the next few months. The average stay at the facility is about 1 1/2 months, Zumwalt said, after which the animals are taken out to the Catalina Channel and released.

Although the number of animals rescued, treated and released from the state’s marine mammal care facilities is relatively small--less than 1% of the overall California seal and sea lion population of about 200,000 animals--not everyone thinks that rehabilitating sea lions is such a good idea. To sport and commercial fishermen, who watch with growing frustration as more and more sea lions hang around their boats and swipe their fish, rescuing sea lions and sending them back to sea is like granting unconditional pardons to felons.

As far as many of the fishermen are concerned, the care center exemplifies an overly sentimental, warm-and-fuzzy attitude toward sea lions that ruins fishing off California’s coasts.

“It’s a tough situation,” said Bob Fletcher, president of the San Diego-based Sportfishing Assn. of California. “You’re out there, struggling to make a living, struggling to survive, and you’re being absolutely harassed by packs of sea lions. And then you come back to shore and see these organizations finding sick animals and bringing them back to health and sending them back out to steal your fish. It’s tough.”

“I don’t have anything against treating wounded and sick animals,” said Gordon King, master of the Isle of Redondo fishing barge in Santa Monica Bay, which has been plagued by sea lions that steal fish off fishermen’s lines before they can be reeled in. “I love animals, and when I’m not fishing I even love seals. But when I’m fishing I hate ‘em, I just hate ‘em. We’re fighting for our lives out there.”

Fletcher and others say the problems with sea lions began after passage of the 1972 federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which made it a crime to kill or even “harass” marine mammals, sea lions included. Prior to the act, sea lions were not a problem for fishermen because any sea lion that was seen stealing fish was routinely shot--”lethally removed,” to use the current euphemism. According to Fletcher, sea lions had learned not to hang around boats.

In the two decades since the act was passed, the pinniped population off California coasts and offshore islands has increased dramatically. According to Joseph Cordaro, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service office in Long Beach, there are now an estimated 100,000 sea lions in California waters, with the population steadily increasing about 5% a year. Cordaro said there are also 20,000 harbor seals, 60,000 northern elephant seals, 4,000 northern fur seals and about 1,500 northern sea lions. Of those, only the last is listed as a “threatened” species in California.

Fletcher says the sea lions--because of their population growth and their knowledge that they have nothing to fear from fishing boats--have turned into “marauders.”

“You can hardly throw your bait in the water anymore without a sea lion stealing it,” he said.

Fletcher insists that his organization does not advocate a return to widespread “lethal removal” of sea lions. He would prefer that the government spend research money on sea lion deterrents, such as sophisticated noise-makers, and “manage” the sea lion population to keep it within acceptable numbers. Fletcher has been circulating petitions to revise the Marine Mammal Protection Act when it comes up for reauthorization by Congress later this year.

“The population has gone way past the point where (sea lions) need the protection afforded by the Act,” he said. “There needs to be a different approach taken.”

Despite the widespread public perception that the Marine Mammal Protection Act makes it illegal to kill a sea lion under any circumstances, the animals are still occasional targets of legal gunfire. The act now permits licensed commercial fishermen and sport fishing boat captains to “lethally remove” sea lions if they are actively stealing fish or damaging equipment, or to use “seal bombs”--cherry bomb-like explosives--to scare the animals away. Skippers must report and justify any shooting of a sea lion to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Cordaro of National Marine Fisheries Service says that in the past year he has received “less than a dozen” such shooting reports. But the general feeling is that there are a lot more sea lion shootings that go unreported.

“We see a lot of unconfirmed gunshot wounds,” said Allan Rosen-Ducat, president of Marine & Mountain Wildlife Rescue, the group that rescued One-Eye the sea lion. “We also see a lot of seal bomb wounds. Sometimes the fishermen will put it (the seal bomb) in a fish and toss it in the water, and the animal grabs it. It tends to blow their lower jaws off.”

Zumwalt and others at the care facility believe it is important to rescue individual animals whenever possible--partly because it’s wrong to let any animal suffer, and partly because there may come a time when the marine mammal populations will experience a massive “die-off” due to disease or other causes.

“We need to give them every break we can,” Zumwalt said, “because of the way we (humans) are affecting their existence.”

“The pendulum is high right now,” Pat Ryan, operations manager at the center, said of the marine mammal populations. “But eventually the pendulum may swing the other way, and we might need all of these animals that we can get.”