Orphaned Sea Lion Pups Get a Second Chance
June 5, 2015 - This year, more than 3,000 sea lion pups have been abandoned by their mothers along California's northern coast. Warmer ocean waters are affecting the food supply, and the mothers are moving farther north, perhaps unable to take their pups with them.
People can save some of these sea lion pups. The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, is doing what it can to nurse them back to health and then set them free into the wild north of the area where they were abandoned.
Click here to read more:
"Number of Starving Sea Lions in California 'Unprecedented'"
Transcript
Dr. Shawn Johnson, Director of Veterinary Science, The Marine Mammal Center:
So
far this year there’s been 3000 pups that have stranded this year in
California, all along California. A thousand of them have come here to The
Marine Mammal Center.
We
help any marine mammal that is in distress or in pain or that needs help. We
bring them here to Sausalito and give them the care that they need with the
ultimate goal of releasing them back out into the wild.
We’ve
been seeing an increasing trend since 2013 in the number of sea lion pups that
have been basically been abandoned or being weaned early by their mothers down
in the Channel Islands and they’re washing ashore all up and down the
California coast here.
Woman on phone in office:
Marine
Mammal Center, this is Maggie. We are seeing a lot of sea lions that are just
by themselves, they’ve been hauling up on beaches. Can
you tell if this one is looking a little skinny? Yeah, I’m just pulling up a
map to make sure I know exactly where you are.
Man on phone outside:
About
two feet long, he actually went into the building here.
Dr. Shawn Johnson:
At
first when the sea lion pups started stranding, we weren’t really sure what was
happening. In January we had 50 sea lions which was 10 times more than we
normally get in January and then by March we had 400.
As
the numbers continue to increase more and more then we started to reach out to
the biologists that study the sea lions on the Channel Islands where these sea
lions should have been out with their mothers nursing.
We
basically realized that this is directly related to increased ocean
temperatures. Some of the water along the California coast here is 2 to 5
degrees above normal for this time of year. This is record warm water
temperatures here in California that was caused by a decrease in upwelling.
Upwelling
is caused by northern winds that blow warm water away from shore and cold water
comes up and when the cold water comes up it brings all these nutrients for the
fish. And the sea lions require these fish to provide enough nutrients for
their pups. So basically there’s no food for the sea lion moms to provide for
their pups.
These
sea lions are sentinels of the sea, they’re raising the alarm about our ocean
health.
We’re
a rehabilitation center, but we’re really a full service hospital. We have
several veterinarians, a full veterinary staff. Our ultimate goal is to provide
the best possible care for the animals that come here.
Man in examination room:
Shooting.
Clear.
Dr. Shawn Johnson:
We’ll
treat them for any medical problems they have and then give them all the
nutrition they need to gain enough weight and we have release weights, we want
an animal to be a certain weight that we’re confident when we release them that
they’ll have enough time to go where to find the fish.
We
tend to release most of our animals up at Chimney Rock, up at Point Reyes
National Seashore, where there’s other animals of their same species there that
they can find and hopefully be able to figure out how to make it on their own
this time.