It’s kind of funny to hear an elephant seal out in the woods, but it’s a sound the California Wildlife Center (CWC) hopes to make permanent.
The nonprofit CWC currently houses six seals in a temporary rehab facility hastily completed in April at its base in Malibu Canyon off Piuma Road. The facility was built to house an overflow of rescued marine mammals that primarily affected sea lions. As of May 19, 1,431 sea lions have stranded in Southern California in 2013, nearly five times the average for an entire year.
The initial benefits to marine wildlife from the facility have been enough to warrant a permanent facility, according to Jeff Hall, the CWC’s marine mammal stranding coordinator. Now the only question is where to put it.
“We’re not asking for money, but what we are asking is for you and everyone in the City of Malibu to keep their eyes open for a location,” Hall said in a speech before the Malibu City Council last week. “We need to move our temporary facility to a more permanent location that has access to sewer, electricity and water, zoning for animal care and room to expand in the future. Some of our patients can be a little noisy, so it shouldn’t have neighbors too close,” he laughed.
Because the area’s only marine mammal rehabilitation centers are in San Pedro and Laguna Beach, every seal or sea lion rescued in Malibu for the past 15 years has been driven one-and-a-half to two hours to get medical help, usually after spending hours on the beach cold and dehydrated.
Those inefficiencies were magnified by the events of this spring, when emaciated sea lion pups started washing up by the hundreds on Southern California beaches. The cause is still under investigation, but lack of prey fish is suspected as the probable cause.
The high number of sick and dying sea lions taxed the resources of all marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation facilities in Southern California, including the CWC, which has rescued or relocated 213 marine mammals so far this year–more than double the total number of animals rescued all of last year.
“In order to help [the facilities at Laguna Beach and San Pedro], we applied for funds and grants and were able to build a temporary marine mammal facility,” Hall said. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to improve the care we give these animals, and now realize all of the amazing things we could do if we had a permanent rehabilitation facility.”
Former CWC executive director Cindy Reyes, who was put in charge of getting the temporary facility built in a matter of weeks in April, said one of the biggest challenges was figuring out what to do with all the wastewater the facility generates.
“The biggest challenge has been figuring out what to do with the wastewater, because we’re septic only,” Reyes said. “Wastewater will be put in holding receptacles that are either picked up or pumped away.”
The wastewater issue limits the number of elephant seals or sea lions that can be kept at any given time, and is one of the biggest reasons the group is looking for a nearby permanent location with sewer hook-up.
“The CWC is very excited to finally bring marine mammal rehabilitation to Malibu,” Hall said last week before the council. “We’d like to continue and expand, and ask your help to do that.”
