\u00a0recent incidents that have gone viral on social media showing people harassing the sea lions<\/a> have the City of San Diego wanting better enforcement, but what would that mean for access?<\/p>\n\u201cThe sea lions and us, we coexist; we stay away from the sea lions,” Cary Canning, who lives in La Jolla, said. “We watch them. They frolic. I don\u2019t think no one needs to do more than what they have done. I think the rangers can do more in the summertime, especially if they need to close down access to tourists during the pupping season; that\u2019s on the table as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need more education,” Canning continued. “But we need more of that to let us loads of tourists in the summertime know that they can\u2019t go up and do selfies with the sea lions and get too close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, only NOAA can enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it illegal to harass, harm, pursue, feed, capture, injure, restrain or kill the animals. Since it’s a federal law, city park rangers can’t enforce it.<\/p>\n
This is why San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Council President Joe Lacava and the California Coastal Commission plan to send a letter to NOAA asking for them to help enforce or deputize city park rangers to do so.<\/p>\n
“There is precedent for that in other areas, so it is not an unusual request,” said La Cava.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Treasurer of La Jolla Parks and Beaches, Chas Dye, said it’s not that easy for NOAA to help, saying the agency has limited officers, making it difficult to designate one to La Jolla Cove.<\/p>\n
Another option on the table is closing the cove.<\/p>\n
Dye does not support a total closure of La Jolla Cove, but during pupping season, he does think it could be an option to close the cove to anyone who is not getting in the water.<\/p>\n
“I would love to see the rangers down there capable of writing citations [and] concessions, other than federal agencies,” Dye said. “Even if you take the stand, it’s really simple: just close the cove; sorry, that’s not going to occur instantaneously, nor is it something that is widely wanted.”<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, the city has added more signage to the cove educating people on how to keep a safe distance from the sea lions.<\/p>\n
Dye says he is currently working with local congress members and state senators to try and change the laws around who can enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but he expects these conversations to take months.<\/p>\n
LaCava says they expect NOAA to respectfully decline sending an officer out. He also told News 8 he would consider a partial closure, but says that’s a last resort.<\/p>\n
Below is the full statement LaCava sent to News 8 Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
“Unlike Point La Jolla that moved from outreach to education to closure, we are in partnership with the Coastal Commission to explore every step with a goal to avoid closure, preserve coastal access, and maintain appropriate distance from sea lions.<\/p>\n
The increased signage and greater presence of City park rangers have not achieved the level of compliance from visitors. We all seem to agree that enforcement\u2014not just encouragement\u2014is the next step.<\/p>\n
The Mayor and I are jointly requesting that NOAA provide staffing to enforce the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Frankly, we are expecting that request to be respectfully declined given NOAA\u2019s minimal staffing management of the MMPA across the entire western coastline.<\/p>\n
Instead, we are pinning our next step on NOAA to \u201cdeputize\u201d City park rangers so they can issue citations. I believe that visitors will be more responsive and compliant and either stay a safe distance from sea lions or to move quickly from the stairs and into the ocean water.<\/p>\n
We anticipate a response soon. I continue to seek input from the community organizations on this important local issue.”<\/p>\n
News 8 has reached out to NOAA for comment, and the law enforcement office said it will review the letter once it arrives.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent incidents that have gone viral on social media showing people harassing the sea lions have the City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-497934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497934","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=497934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cbs8.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\n