{"id":629701,"date":"2026-05-07T21:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629701\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T21:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:59:08","slug":"chonkers-the-stellar-sea-lion-appears-to-have-left-the-bay-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629701\/","title":{"rendered":"Chonkers the Stellar Sea Lion Appears to Have Left the Bay For Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

After an unusually long stay among his smaller California sea lion brethren on the floating docks by Pier 39, which ended up making national news<\/a>, Chonkers the enormous Stellar sea lion seems to have left the area.<\/p>\n

Chonkers is gone, everybody. At least, that’s what it appears, and reps for Pier 39 say he hasn’t been spotted in several days, to the great disappointment of tourists who’ve now all been told to go look for him.<\/p>\n

The Chronicle reports<\/a> that it sent out a photographer to get some more shots of the Stellar sea lion on Monday, and she came back with shots of a large sea lion who turned out not to be Chonkers \u2014 just an extra-large male California sea lion who, nonetheless, seemed to be delighting the assembled sea lion watchers.<\/p>\n

Pier 39 spokesperson Sue Muzzin confirmed the mistake, and said that Chonkers had not been around since last week sometime. And while this particular visit, partly because of its length, made headlines, Chonkers has stopped by Pier 39 in other years for shorter stays, and he clearly seems to know the place for its anchovy-rich waters.<\/p>\n

“This year, that he stayed for a month to six weeks is very unusual,” Muzzin tells the Chronicle.<\/p>\n

Chonkers arrived around mid-March<\/a>, taking up more space than the other sea lions on the docks, and he continued to hang out and gain more notoriety with each passing week. The nickname appears to have come from Reddit<\/a> \u2014 where else? \u2014 where one user joked that he was of the species Chonkus maximus.<\/p>\n

Stellar sea lions typically live further out in the ocean, and the majority of the population resides off the coast of Alaska. But they make occasional appearances in the Bay, and Chonkers’ extended stay this year might make it memorable enough for him to return next year.<\/p>\n

Stellar sea lions are lighter in color than their California counterparts and about three times as large, and males have different shaped heads than California sea lions, with a more lion-mane-esque bulk with longer hair around their necks which makes the name “sea lion” make more sense.<\/p>\n

Below is a brief video from the Marine Mammal Center about a female Stellar sea lion pup named Smores who was rescued seven years ago, and rehabilitated at the Center before being released, alont with a California sea lion friend, in the Farallon Islands.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Previously: Extra-Large Sea Lion Who’s Been Hanging Out By Pier 39 Makes National News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After an unusually long stay among his smaller California sea lion brethren on the floating docks by Pier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-629701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}