In the hills above Malibu, the California Wildlife Center has been rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife since 1998, taking in or rescuing on-site fauna from land, sea and air.
The scope—and intimacy —of its work is nowhere more apparent than in their rescue and rehabilitation of Neal the Seal, a sick young elephant seal found on a Malibu beach in March, nursed back to health and released back into the wild last week along with another recuperated seal.
One evening last March, soon-to-be Malibu resident Susie Wiggins was enjoying the sunset at a friend’s beach house when she noticed something small, slick and unmoving on the sand. She approached, saw it was a live animal and took to the internet to find out what she should do.
“My friends were telling me I should take a blanket and pull him back into the water, but I read that you shouldn’t touch a marine animal,” Wiggins said. “So I called the California Wildlife Center and they said to leave him alone and they would come collect him.”
By the time the CWC was able to get there, the elephant seal pup was gone from the beach. A search found him huddled near a creek, looking the worse for wear. He was taken to the CWC facility, where he was plied with fluids and “fish smoothies” to fatten him up.
“This little guy was severely emaciated and dehydrated,” Marine Program Manager Jeff Hall said. “We have been seeing a lot of this up and down the coast. The anchovy and sardine populations are down, and I don’t know if there is a specific reason for that. But as soon as this guy was able, we were feeding him whole anchovies and he thrived.”
Wiggins found herself curiously attached to the small creature, and was gratified to learn that the rescue of an elephant seal is somewhat rare around here. Unlike California sea lions, which tend to stay in local waters, elephant seals typically travel 13,000 miles to the Arctic Circle for the summer months, gorging on the plentiful fish to gain strength for the long trip back to southern California.
“Most elephant seals are born during December and January,” Hall said. “The only time they are out of the water is when they come onshore to give birth, then mate again, so they sort of take care of everything at once. And elephant seals tend to return to the rookery where they were born.”
Last year and this year saw a rise in the number of emaciated young seals and sea lions hauling out on California coastlines. Victoria Harris, director of the CWC, says there seems to be no answer for this phenomenon.
“Our number of sea lion rescues already are up from last year, which was insane,” Harris said. “Why? Contributing factors are most likely that thing you’re not supposed to say — global warming — and what we are doing to our oceans. There was that huge fish die-off in Marina del Rey the other day.”
Harris was referring to some 70,000 anchovies that showed up dead in Marina del Rey on Saturday. Scientists speculate it was due to “red bloom,” a growth of red algae that sucks oxygen from the water, killing off marine wildlife. Recent waves of hot weather could have led to the proliferation of red algae, as well as chemical fertilizers that wash into urban watersheds that lead to the ocean.
In any case, the CWC trades off seal and sea lion rehabilitation with a marine facility in San Pedro, nursing the nutrient-starved youngsters back to health and returning them to their home waters. The CWC’s marine mammal program costs about $100,000 a year to operate — a significant sum for the nonprofit, which accepts no state or federal funding.
Last Friday, the recently rescued elephant seal, dubbed “Neal the Seal” by Wiggins, was deemed healthy enough and returned to the beach where he was found, along with another rehabilitated pup named Green Violet.
“He took right off for the water when we let him out,” Hall said. “We’ve heard reports of elephant seal sightings in the area, so maybe he’ll hang around awhile.”
