One year after an emergency marine mammal care facility was built at the California Wildlife Center, the temporary haven for stranded sea lions and elephant seals has become an essential piece of the CWC.
“Last year was a trial year, and a success,” said Mike Remski, marine mammal rehabilitation manager. “And we now want to take it further each year. [2014] has been the first real season at CWC with marine mammals,” with a full contingent of 15 elephant seal pups.
Although the facility was built as a temporary structure during a crisis time when workers were rescuing countless stranded and emaciated sea lion pups in 2013, former executive director Cindy Reyes said the plan now is to keep it permanently.
“The intent was not to disassemble it [once the crisis was over], because we want to provide this service to the community,” Reyes said.
The marine mammal care branch of the CWC was built in just three weeks last year and opened in May 2013, as California dealt with a record number of sea lion strandings along the coastline.
More than 1,600 pups were stranded across California during the first four months of 2013, including over 200 in Malibu. The strandings broke all records of the past 40 years and alarmed much of the public. They also led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare an “Unusual Mortality Event” for the animals. Nearly all of the sea lions affected were born in the summer of 2012 in the Channel Islands rookeries, and no one knew what was causing their starvation.
Just last month, NOAA finally announced the probable cause of last year’s sea lion strandings – “a lack of high nutrient prey fish” that are critical in a sea lion’s diet. In other words, there weren’t enough oil-rich sardines to eat. Many lactating females were unable to nurse their young because they were undernourished themselves.
Although the number of sardines fluctuates from year to year with ocean conditions, commercial fisheries exacerbate the problem by overfishing. A NOAA report released in March showed the Pacific sardine population in near collapse — down 74 percent since 2007 with no evidence of recovery. In response to the findings, the Pacific Fishery Management Council sharply curtailed catch limits for sardines over the past few months.
CWC received its first pup patients shortly after construction was completed last year, and for the first time since the CWC’s opening in 1998, workers no longer had to transport every distressed animal rescued from Malibu to a care center located an hour away in San Pedro.
In the meantime, CWC is already making improvements to its fledgling marine mammal rehab program.
“A new, in-ground filtered pool gives the elephant seals a chance to swim, play and act more naturally,” Remski said. “We can throw fish in, and if they dive down to get them, it gives us more assurance that they’ll know what they’re doing when they’re released.”
Another big change is releasing renourished seals at Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands, whereas last year, they were taken to a beach in Malibu. Island Packers, a small company that runs whale watching cruises and trips to the Channel Islands, provides free boat transportation to Santa Rosa Island for two seals at a time. The island is about 46 miles from Ventura Harbor and bordered on two sides by marine preserves.
Remski said the island is a more suitable release site for the young seals, because “there’s no people, they can haul out on the beach if they need to, and the island area has a number of environments and food sources.”
So far, 2014 has been a more normal year for CWC in terms of marine mammal rescues, while the central and northern parts of California are experiencing an influx of starving pups this season. CWC has rescued a “full spring-time batch of yearling sea lion pups that are malnourished,” said Remski, as well as a normal contingent of lost elephant seal pups that were unable to survive on their own. Seals are usually kept in the rehab for two to three months before release.
In order to expand its marine mammal facility, CWC is still looking for a nearby location with more space and access to a sewer system, since water collection and removal are critical. Remski mentioned the possibility of a couple of sites on public land.
However, Board President Victoria Harris said, “Everything is still in the very preliminary discussions and we face many obstacles.”