Marine Mammal Protection Act<\/a>, making it illegal to harass, harm, pursue, feed, capture, injure, restrain or kill the animals. Such actions may be punishable through fines or jail time, according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\nTyler Muehl, an 18-year-old La Jolla resident, admitted to attacking the animal as it sat on the sea wall the night of July 22, according to a plea agreement.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.<\/p>\n
At the August coastal commission meeting a few weeks later, Commissioner Matt O\u2019Malley said he was \u201cbeyond angry\u201d about the incident and questioned whether a partial closure of La Jolla Cove would be appropriate \u201cuntil the city gets their program implementation figured out and investigates what is going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, the La Jolla Parks & Beaches board introduced a resolution recommending reduced access to La Jolla Cove at its Aug. 24 meeting.<\/p>\n
At the time, La Jolla Parks & Beaches member Chas. Dye said, \u201cThe threat is imminent of completely closing (The Cove), and some action needs to be taken. Given the choice of closing The Cove or this, I would take this.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the Sept. 10 CCC meeting, Commissioner Matt O\u2019Malley said he agreed with \u201cproactive management approaches\u201d that have been proposed to keep people away from the sea lions, including using caution tape, cones and rangers in the sand when needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat said, it hasn\u2019t happened and I don\u2019t know if it will happen in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he would support a plan in which \u201cingress and egress to the water is preserved\u201d but wildlife viewing would be limited to the areas above the beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat might be the only workable solution,\u201d he continued. \u201cI think because the city has not been able to implement, for various reasons, the protocol it came up with, you are seeing the abuse of the wildlife in that area constantly. \u2026 The idea of having wildlife viewing from above and the beach just being for ingress and egress \u2026 there may be some interest in doing that. If that is the baseline and we can phase in a potential active management of The Cove, that might be a better way than trying to undo what exists right now. I would be very much in favor of that and will continue to advocate for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agreeing, Commissioner Caryl Hart said limited access \u201cmakes a lot of sense to me\u201d and that \u201cYou don\u2019t see anyone lying around on those beaches \u2026 most of the time, people are accessing the beach there to take selfies or get close to the sea lions.\u201d<\/p>\n
CCC executive director Kate Huckelbridge said \u201cWe are still trying to figure out the best way to get through this issue. I think everyone is loath to completely eliminate access to this beach area, and that\u2019s understandable. \u2026 So that is a solution we would be interested in exploring with the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representing the office of San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava, Brian Elliot said \u201cThis conversation is starting to drift in that direction of what access looks like\u201d but that the council office was \u201creally leaning into\u201d the community for guidance and support. He did not offer any concrete details or next steps.<\/p>\n
During public comment, several requested the city of San Diego enforce the laws that are already in place rather than implement new changes to access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the California Coastal Commission recently said they would \u201cvery much\u201d support a proposal for limited access…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,930,5184,6804,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-472093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-la-jolla","tag-la-jolla-light","tag-la-jolla-light-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472093","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=472093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}