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.