The California Wildlife Center (CWC) began housing malnourished sea lion pups at its facility in Malibu, taking in its first three rescues last week.
CWC, which now can care for up to 25 sea lions, has been inundated with calls from Malibu locals and visitors who see stranded and often malnourished pups on beaches. Before gaining permission to treat some of the rescues at its Malibu location, the CWC took all pups to the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, previously the only facility in L.A. County equipped to deal with suffering sea lions.
The new resource comes in the middle of a heavy rescue season, and CWC Executive Director Victoria Harris says “there’s nothing average about it.”
This time last year, the center had facilitated seven rescues. As of the beginning of this week, 129 rescues have been performed. She attributes the increase in rescues to a lack of food source available for the young sea lions to catch. Harris shared that mothers may be going to deeper water to get food, but pups cannot follow.
CWC is in the process of training volunteers and interns on how to care for sea lion pups. The center has been able to rehabilitate elephant seals since last year, but treating sea lion pups is a different process.
“There’s a big — huge — difference,” Harris shared. “They’re smaller than elephant seals. They have to be tubed four times a day and it’s harder to do with the smaller animals.”
The sea lion pups will spend an average of six to eight weeks at the center, Harris predicts, based off of the track record of the San Pedro-based rehabilitation center.
“Ten had been brought into the Marine Mammal Center in January and were released last week,” Harris explained. “It depends how quickly you can fatten them up and give them a little reserve before you release them.”
Because the sea lion pups are coming in malnourished, there are extra steps the center must take in order to keep them warm. There are pens that house the elephant seals on site at the CWC that have water that is four feet deep, but that is too deep for the sea lions, who would get cold at that depth.
“We had to buy kiddie pools that are not as deep,” Harris said. “They don’t have any meat on their bones so they would get cold if they got into deeper water.”
The center also uses “pig blankets” to help keep the pups warm. This type of blanket is used on farm animals, but the material is water-resistant, so they are used in the pens that house sea lion pups.
While the center makes the purchases necessary to house seal pups and trains the volunteers to get everyone up to speed on procedures, they are also asking for donations to fund some of the changes. Over the weekend, they created a Seal Pup Fund, which raised $11,625.
CWC will need another washer and dryer to handle the additional towels they are using with the sea lions. They also need to order enough fish to feed the pups and get them healthy.
Harris told The Malibu Times that she, as well as the volunteers, understand and sympathize with the anguish residents feel when they see a stranded pup and call in for a rescue, but she’s requesting that people are patient.
“We are requesting people’s patience,” she said. “We’re feeling the same thing they are. We’re doing this 365 days and it isn’t getting any easier.”
Harris was particularly saddened by an instance where a sea lion pup was killed by a dog off its leash on the beach at Paradise Cove. When the sea lion was found, it was still alive, but the bite was too bad and it didn’t survive. She explained the importance of keeping dogs on leashes, especially with the amount of sea lion pups being found stranded.
“Even if the dogs don’t attack the animal, they can scare them and send them back into the water, which can be a death sentence as well,” Harris said. “It’s against the law and we’re contacting the enforcement agencies.”
CWC is also encountering many sea lions that have washed ashore dead.“It’s hard to tell, and if high tide comes in, it takes them out,” Harris said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
