Lotta Lookin' Goin' On

Spent most of the day yesterday looking for animals that were reported on the beaches near Asilomar and the 17 Mile Drive.  It sounded like a juvenile elephant seal pup, (or more than one of them), was hauling out on the beach, but returning to the water before we arrived. We searched diligently, hiking along three or four beaches, scanning with my binoculars, but no stranded animals. Which is a very good thing!

It was an absolutely beautiful, sunny day, and the beaches were almost deserted. If there was any good time to haul out on the usually busy, crowded beaches, it certainly was yesterday. No tourists, no locals and no dogs. Just sparkling clear blue sky, all kinds of shore birds, an once, an harbor seal swimming near the rocks, eyeing us and moving on.

So here is a pic of four harbor seals lounging on the rocks at a rookery along 17 Mile Drive. I took this photo when I drove down there last week...

Baby Northern Fur Seal - So Far From Home

Yesterday we rescued our first Northern Fur Seal of the season. A man called early in the day, reporting what he thought was a harbor seal pup on a fairly isolated beach north of Wilder Ranch, which is north of Santa Cruz. There was reluctance to send out a crew to check it out. We had three trucks onsite and six volunteers, plenty of people to drive up there. But, sometimes, reports are trivialized by people who want to wait for a second caller, or say, "Oh, its probably just an elephant seal moulting", without really going there and actually seeing what is going on. 


So we were told to contact the reporting party to get more information, but couldn't reach him. Then, we had a call that one of our volunteers in Santa Cruz had picked up an entangled sea lion and we needed to drive to Santa Cruz to transfer it to our truck. Three of us headed out, picked up the sea lion, and then made a unanimous decision and headed up to Wilder Ranch.


North of the Ranger Station, dirt roads wander through farmlands and overlook several beaches at the bottom of cliffs. Small, rugged trails lead down to several somewhat isolated beaches. Only authorized vehicles are allowed on the tiny dirt roads, so it is only hikers and cyclists that are seen. 


The day was windy and cold, with blowing sand. We stopped often to look with my binoculars over the edge and down to the beach. We slowly drove all the way down to the beach across from Long Marine Lab, turned the truck around in a tiny wide spot and started slowly back. A new volunteer said that she thought she might have spotted something a ways back, but hadn't said anything.We went to that location, and sure enough, a little black spot that looked like it was a rock or burned piece of wood was lying alone on the beach. 


Looking through my binoculars, I said, "OMG, I think that is a fur seal." Impossible? It is way too early and way too far from their usual habitat. Here is what the Marine Mammal Center says about Northern Fur Seals:

RANGE/HABITAT: The full range of the northern fur seal extends throughout the Pacific rim from Japan to the Channel Islands of California, although the main breeding colonies are in the Pribilof and Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. Smaller rookeries (breeding grounds) exist on the Kuril Islands North of Japan, Robben Island in the Sea of Okhotsk, and on San Miguel Island off Southern California. Northern fur seals live almost all of the time in the open ocean, and only use certain offshore islands for pupping and breeding. They rarely come ashore except during these times, and are almost never seen on mainland beaches unless they are sick.


We quickly got our gear unloaded and scrambled down the rocky trail. The tide was coming in and we dared not lose the little guy. Cristi took the net and I took the herding board. Karisa, on her first day, observed. I crept between the animal and the water. Cristi slowly crept up on the animal from behind, and quickly got the net over his head. He came to life, snarling and trying to escape. He was so tiny that he was lost in the net. We got the crate and put the opening of the net in front of the door. 


I just kept bunching up and pulling loose parts of the net to try to get the little guy in. There was too much netting. So I just reached thru the net and got it by the scruff of the neck and put it in the crate. These little guys are biters - they are quick. The have lots of sharp teeth, and can turn their head in an instant to bite you bigtime. But I got him in and fastened the door.


Karisa and I carried him up over the rocks and loose, slippery dirt trail, and secured the crate in truck. We headed back with an unexpected, endangered species: a Northern Fur Seal.


The little guy weighed in at 5.9 kgs, hardly more than birth weight. About the size of a cat. We named him Believe It. A comment on the crap we have to go thru sometimes to just go out and check on a reported animal. 


Believe It was put in a quiet, isolated spot. These animals stress out easily, and can die from it. With their thick fur, they can also overheat easily. With instructions from the vet staff in Sausalito, Marina and I gently tube fed a tiny amount of formula, and gave it a sub-cue of electrolytes. It will go up to TMMC today. I hope that the Ocean Gods will smile on Believe It, and it will survive to swim again in the ocean.


Follow the link to The Marine Mammal center to learn more about The Northern Fur Seal http://tinyurl.com/yzzpagg

It Belongs To All Of Us

Have been watching the fantastic series on PBS about our National Parks by Ken Burns. The dedication by so many men to save the Parks for all Americans reminded me of somethng I said a couple of weeks ago when I was on a rescue.

I was standing on a beach in Pacific Grove, by a large sea lion in distress, waiting for the other crew members to bring the crate, net and boards down to the beach. Several tourists were watching from the parking lot above us, and one older man, trying to be humorous, hollered down to me, "Hey, does that thing belong to you?" "No sir," I said, "he belongs to all of us."

"Thank you, young lady," he said, smiling, "that was a very good answer."

A Drowning Sea Lion

Rescued a 120-pound sea lion from drowning today. It was so sick it was unable to move, and being rolled around in the surf by the incoming tide. We thot it was dead, but I saw it move it's mouth. We went running into the water - me and another gal grabbed it with our hands and pulled it up on the beach. We had to lift and push it into the crate. Took it back to MBO for meds... don't know if it will make it or not. But if not, at least it didn't drown or have the sea gulls pecking it's eyes out while it was still alive...

Not Every Rescued Sea Lion Survives

Just went to the Current Patients page on The Marine Mammal Center website. They have 69 animals in the hospital right now. I see that only one of the sea lions we rescued on Monday is listed. Carmel seems to have survived, but I don't see Soquel on the list. The mortality rate is not good, less than 50% of rescued animals survive, I think.

But every animal, every one of them, that we pick up on the beach would surely die if left there alone. And their death is ugly, usually having their eyes picked out by hordes of sea gulls while they are still alive, and then their brains are eaten. They die starving and dehydrated, and sometimes harassed by dogs and stupid, mean people while they cannot defend themselves.

Life is rough for the inhabitants of our oceans and beaches, and Nature is cruel and relentless.

Slowing Down... For Now

The onslaught of starving sea lions seems to have slowed down, and now we are rescuing larger animals that are very ill. I heard recently that marine scientists are estimating that 70% of the sea lion pups died this year. It was a record year for births and also for deaths.

So we get fewer reports lately. Last Monday, we picked up two sea lions, Cliffhangar and Keshawn, but both died at the Sausalito hospital. Yesterday we picked up a 56 kg sea lion from Seacliff Beach, named Soquel, and a 28 kg sea lion from Carmel River Beach, named, what else, Carmel. Both appear to be ill, rather than wounded. Both animals were stranded on a busy beach, and were surrounded by people and dogs.

Normal, healthy sea lions will, like any wild animal, immediately run back into the water when approached by people or dogs. So when these guys stay on the beach, listless and lethargic for hours and hours, we know they are sick. Even the sick guys can put up a huge fight when netted, but that doesn't mean they should not be rescued.

These two animals we picked up yesterday will be transported to the Sausalito hospital today and, hopefully will survive and be returned to the water soon.  But, we received four animals yesterday from the San Luis Obispo facility that had to be transported to the main hospital in Sausalito.

 We do transports in three stages: the MBO (Monterey Bay Operations) volunteer drives down to King City and meets the volunteer from San Luis Obispo with their animal patients, usually exchanging vehicles, and returning with the animals to MBO. Then, in the early evening, an MBO volunteer drives the animals up to Half Moon Bay, meeting a volunteer from the Sausalito facility, and again exchanging vehicles and patients. We are usually short-staffed at MBO, so finding drivers is often a challenge. For several months, I did both north and south legs of the trip on my shift day. But last night, I only did the north leg.

Here is what I posted on Facebook last night:

Did a transport to Half Moon Bay this evening in a stinky sea lion poop van. Drizzle and pea-soup fog in the dark - a gnarly drive back. A 132-mile RT, plus 56 miles back to where I live...

It's About Time!

This blog has been languishing for quite some time, while I've been busy with my Nikon D300, and even busier volunteering with the Marine Mammal Center's Monterey Bay Operations rescue team. So I'm thinking that I will be writing probably more about the rescues than the photography. I love working with sea lions, ellies (elephant seal pups) and harbor seals. Rewarding and heart-breaking work. TMMC has rescued over 1300 marine mammals so far this year, from our three sites: Marin Headlands, San Luis Obispo and Monterey Bay in Moss Landing, where I volunteer.

Me helping rescue a sick 500-pound sea lion from a Santa Cruz Beach

Seeing hundreds of starving juvenile sea lions is heart-breaking. Being able to rescue and save some of them is rewarding. For me, it has meant 12 to 17 hour shifts on my days: Mondays and Fridays. It has meant seeing first-hand how sick and polluted our beautiful and majestic ocean has become due to human pollution and trash. If each one of us would stop using and discarding plastic bags, it would make a difference. If each one of us would pick up a bag of garbage each time we went to the beach it would make a difference. If each one of us would stop throwing our trash into the ocean when we are on our boats, it would make a difference. The difference between life and death for the marine mammals and birds who call the ocean their home.