Marine center volunteers teach seal pups the finer points of dining.

SEASON FOR SEALS: Being a seal pup is like being an adolescent. Not a baby, not quite an adult.

With nursing over, mothers have taken off, and the pups must forage for food on their own.

Sick and injured seal pups end up underweight and dehydrated. So leave it to the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro to help.

This is peak season for the center to aid sick and injured seal pups. This week, it was caring for seven California sea lions, 16 northern elephant seals and one harbor seal. Volunteers give medicine and food to the pups, some of which were injured by nets or boats. After two months, most are released back into the ocean.

“These are just the weak ones,” said Don Zumwalt, director of the center. “They come in all different types of situations. They even come in with stingrays in their mouths.”

Many young pups do not yet recognize fish for what it is: food. So animal-care volunteers at the center feed the pups by holding the seal’s mouth open and guiding a fish down its throat. The seal eventually accepts the food without its mouth being held open, and the pup later learns how to follow and eat fish tossed into a pool.

So far, the patient load is running about half the level of last year, when storms made it tougher for the seals to search for food, Zumwalt said.

BAHIA DEL SUR: When the Chevron refinery in El Segundo unveiled a new advertising campaign last week, it also let out the news that it was changing the name of the refinery.

Chevron El Segundo is now Chevron South Bay.

No big deal, except that the city was named for the refinery. It means “The Second.” City founders chose the name when it incorporated in 1917 to show its favor with Chevron’s second U.S. refinery, then only six years old.

It’s “not that we are not proud of being in El Segundo,” Chevron spokeswoman Lani Marshall assured a gathering at the refinery last week, including several El Segundo city officials.

The new name, she said, better defines the company’s scope in the region. The company is promoting its work on cleaner-burning fuels, which the state is mandating by 1996 to curb vehicle emissions.

Marshall said she will have “some explaining to do” to El Segundo city officials, although one said he didn’t feel snubbed.

“The emphasis has to be on their needs, not ours,” said Councilman Richard Switz. “I have to believe that Chevron thinks it will help.”

HOOP GOOF: Avid hoopsters were shocked. The city of Los Angeles didn’t even know what happened. One of the prized hoops at Angels Gate Park in San Pedro was kaput.

In January, a construction firm removed a stone arch that held a basketball hoop. Trouble is, they were only supposed to remove the hoop and put on new a backboard. The goof will cost the firm $2,400.

“They weren’t paying attention to the designs we have,” said Mary Braunwarth, a management analyst for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

Most other city parks have basketball poles. But Angels Gate hoopsters seem to have an affinity for arches, and are very unhappy, Braunwarth said.

“The stone arches are very unusual,” she said. “It is nothing like other parks.”

DINOSAUR DISCOVERY: Longtime patrons of the Malaga Cove Library in Palos Verdes Estates remember field trips as kids to the historic building to see a mastodon tusk and Indian relics.

Those days are long gone, and so it seemed were the archeological treasures. Until now.

The Palos Verdes Library District, in an attempt to diffuse rumors that the relics had been thrown out, has been tracking them down. The tusk was discovered on the front porch of a retired district staff member, said Library Director Linda Elliott. Small Indian tools and bowls and bones from a giant sloth turned up in a crawl space at the library, she said.

Now, the relics are in the keep of Rancho de Los Palos Verdes Historical Society, as part of a new museum it opened in March at the Malaga Cove School.

The items are all local artifacts. They were uncovered as homes and businesses were built on the peninsula early this century, and eventually ended up in the library’s hands, said historical society President Mary Roderman.

“It is quite wonderful because these artifacts are from the history of the peninsula,” Roderman said.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Now, considering our maturity, there’s a good chance we might lose one or two of us before this thing is over. If somebody snaps the twig over there, he better decide right now if he wants us to ship him home or fill his pockets with scrap iron and dump him over the side.”

--Capt. Bill Tilghman, 77, speaking to the crew of the Lane Victory, World War II veterans of the U.S. Merchant Marine, who will sail to France for D-Day celebrations. Their average age is 68.