There are the poisonous algal blooms<\/a> off the central and southern coasts. There are massive changes in food <\/a>availability and distribution across the Pacific<\/a>. And there are growing casualties from ship strikes<\/a>, record numbers of entanglements in rope and line<\/a>, and a new heat blob <\/a>forming in the eastern Pacific. <\/p>\n Members of the Marine Mammal Center contain an injured sea lion in Davenport.<\/p>\n (Nic Coury \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n This year may be remembered as one of the gravest for marine mammals on record. Or, more worryingly, a sign that our ocean environment is changing so drastically that in some places and seasons, it\u2019s becoming uninhabitable for the life it holds.<\/p>\n The network of volunteers who tend to stranded marine life is running ragged, said Rulli, answering dozens of rescue calls a day. \u201cIt\u2019s been a brutal year. … It\u2019s been hard on the animals. It\u2019s been traumatic for the volunteers. It\u2019s a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether all of these pressures and changes are related, or are completely separate phenomena happening at the same time in the same place, scientists don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to build our understanding of how ocean conditions relate to the occurrence of disease. But it\u2019s a work in progress. And the world is changing quickly underneath our feet,\u201d said Jamie Lloyd-Smith, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at UCLA.<\/p>\n The first outbreak of leptospirosis in sea lions was reported along the West Coast in 1970, said Katie Prager, a disease ecologist at UCLA. By the 1980s, the Marine Mammal Center and others were keeping comprehensive records. They found that the bacterium tended to cause small, annual outbreaks that started in late summer and lasted just a month or two. <\/p>\n Dr. Alissa Deming, left, and veterinarian assistant Malena Berndt give anti-seizure medicine to a California sea lion named Patsy in a recovery room at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach after it had seizures from toxic algae blooms in June 2023.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Every three to five years, however, they\u2019d see a large outbreak in which scores of animals got sick. In 2011 and 2018 during the last two big outbreaks, roughly 300 animals were rescued, Rulli said.<\/p>\n Lloyd-Smith and others say such leptospira-booms are probably driven by typical population dynamics \u2014 such as when a large enough cohort of never-exposed young animals get it and pass it around on beaches where the highly social animals congregate. <\/p>\n But this year, the outbreak started more than a month earlier than usual, and the number of sickened animals has surpassed any previously recorded outbreak. <\/p>\n This year seems deadlier, too, Rulli said. Leptospirosis typically kills some two-thirds of the animals it sickens. It\u2019s only an impression at this point, but this year it seems to him like even more. <\/p>\n Looking at the sick pup on the Davenport beach, Rulli shook his head and said the animal was about as sick as he\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n The little sea lion was humanely put down soon after it was taken to the Marine Mammal Center\u2019s Castroville clinic, noted on a white board only as \u201cNameless Carcass.\u201d<\/p>\n Why this year\u2019s outbreak has been so devastating is not clear.<\/p>\n Lloyd-Smith and Prager said the leptospira species that affects sea lions is also found in some terrestrial mammals \u2014 such as raccoons, skunks and coyotes. Whether these scavengers are introducing new strains of the bacteria to sea lions on beaches, or the other way around, is not known. Nor is the bacteria\u2019s natural reservoir \u2014 an area of research Lloyd-Smith is actively pursuing. <\/p>\n Jeremy Alcantara of the Marine Mammal Center nets an injured sea lion on a dock in Capitola.<\/p>\n (Nic Coury \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n On a floating dock below the Capitola wharf, two groups of sea lions were lying down in the unusually sticky, humid air of a recent late-September afternoon. Seven were spooning one another in two small clusters \u2014 their flippers outstretched on each other\u2019s bodies, their heads resting on their neighbors\u2019 tummies or backs. <\/p>\n One rested at a distance from the others. It was the one someone had called in about. <\/p>\n For the rescue team, it was the third stop of the day, and it would be another tough one. A quick scan of the eight sea lions showed that another also looked unwell, her hip bones and vertebrae jutted jarringly underneath her blubberless skin. <\/p>\n The rescuers tried to catch the solo sea lion by nabbing her with a large fishing net, but she managed to squirt out of it. Veteran rescuers Jeremy Alcantara and Patrick McDonald regrouped with the others up on the wharf. They decided they\u2019d try for the bony sea lion sunbathing with her friends. <\/p>\n Members of the Marine Mammal Center carry an injured sea lion on the pier in Capitola.<\/p>\n (Nic Coury \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n Since April, the state\u2019s stranding network of volunteer rescue crews has been responding daily to calls about sick sea lions, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and birds. <\/p>\n On the Southern California coast, there was a historic domoic acid outbreak that sickened more than 2,100 animals. <\/p>\n In the Bay Area, there was a record-breaking number of dead gray whales. <\/p>\n And from San Diego to Crescent City, they saw an off-the-chart number of whale entanglements \u2014 humpbacks and gray whales caught in the ropes and lines of the region\u2019s commercial fisheries.<\/p>\n Now there\u2019s worry that a growing marine heat wave in the Pacific could make things even worse \u2014 just as the Trump administration has threatened to pull funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which provides financial help, research and oceanic data for the beleaguered animal crews.<\/p>\n \u201cFortunately, these volunteers don\u2019t give up,\u201d Rulli said. \u201cThey\u2019re completely dedicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Alcantara and McDonald descended the stairs from the wharf to the floating dock, taking roughly 10 minutes to quietly approach the sunbathing sea lions. The skinny one they were after had her flippers tucked tight against her belly.<\/p>\n A curious gull watched from the water. Tourists and locals gawked from above.<\/p>\n With a swoop of the net they caught her, carried her up the ramp to the wharf, quickly maneuvered her into a crate and then the back of an air-conditioned van that drove her to Castroville, where she was pumped with antibiotics and fluids.<\/p>\n She\u2019s now at the center\u2019s headquarters hospital in Sausalito, said Rulli. But \u201chas not been receptive to offers of sustainable ground herring.\u201d <\/p>\n Woodrow, as she has been named, is stable and the center\u2019s veterinary staff will assess her again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAVENPORT, Calif.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0On a spit of sand 12 miles north of Santa Cruz, a small, emaciated sea lion lay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1592,1598,7,1595,9,8,1596,1600,1545,1590,1591,1601,1599,1593,1594,1602,1597,72],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-animal","tag-annual-outbreak","tag-california","tag-california-coast","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-capitola-wharf","tag-corkscrew-shaped-bacteria","tag-dolphin","tag-emaciated-sea-lion","tag-giancarlo-rulli","tag-jamie-lloyd-smith","tag-leptospirosis","tag-marine-mammal","tag-other","tag-pacific","tag-volunteer","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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