A Halfway Home for Recovering Seals and Sea Lions

The four California sea lions at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro splashed around their new 13,000-gallon tank like four kids at a pool party. They dove in. They jumped out. They dove in again and swam to the depths of the six-foot pool before surfacing and leaping, landing on the concrete. Next week they’ll be set free. This is a practice run.

The tank opened over the weekend as part of a statewide program to better equip coastal wildlife centers that nurse injured or sick California sea lions, elephant seals and harbor seals that have been stranded and need to get back on their flippers. The tank and a building with six wash tables were built with $50,000 from the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, a division of the state Department of Fish and Game. The addition is primarily to care for marine mammals that could get coated during an oil spill.

But the tank and equipment--the only facility of its kind in the Los Angeles area--also will be part of the rehabilitation program for the nearly 150 to 200 pinnipeds that pass through the center’s gates every year.

“The last step in rehabilitation is getting them into a tank so they can compete socially and learn to compete for food,” said center director Don Zumwalt, who had been hoping for four years that the center, atop a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, would some day have this tank.

The 17- by 21-foot tank will help animals such as No. 63, a small sea lion brought to the center two weeks ago with an enormous gash on her chest from a boat propeller. The wound was so infected that the tissue had died and gangrene had set in. Jackie Ott, operations manager, said volunteers had to cut away the tissue and give the sea lion pain medication, antibiotics and vitamins.

The tank also will help the three young northern elephant seals who lounge on top of each other in one of the center’s six pens. They were stranded ashore after their mother left them. Because they hadn’t learned to properly fish for food, they grew dehydrated and weak. Now they’re getting fish gruel force-fed through a hose until they are strong enough to eat whole fish. At that point, they will move to the tank to learn how to grab their own fish before being released to the wild.

The Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response was formed in 1991 to set up stations to care for oil-coated wildlife. Its money comes from the interest on a $50-million fund the state mandated that oil companies establish to take care of oil spills.

David Jessup, a senior wildlife veterinarian in Sacramento with that office, said four of the six coastal centers under the auspices of the National Marine Fisheries Service have received money to treat oil-mired animals. Sea World was given $279,000 to care for oiled pinnipeds, sea turtles and sea otters. The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito was given $250,000 to build pens to handle 20 more seals and sea lions and to upgrade its salt water system for sea otters. And the North Coast Marine Mammal Center in Crescent City received $20,000 to build additional pens. The other two centers are in Laguna Beach and Santa Barbara.

The last major oil spill off Los Angeles County was in the Santa Monica Bay in March 1991. A tanker punctured a pipeline while attempting to dock at Chevron U.S.A.’s oil terminal off El Segundo. An estimated 21,000 gallons of oil washed up along 3 1/2 miles of Malibu beaches.

The Marine Mammal Care Center was founded on the grounds of Ft. MacArthur in 1992 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the former owner of Marineland, which closed in 1987. It has two paid staff members and 50 volunteers, and treats injured animals brought in by animal control agencies from Ventura County to Long Beach.