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Sea lion pups dying from starvation

Posted by: Maven on June 16, 2009 at 6:56 am

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

An overabundance of sea lion pups and an apparent lack of food has local animal rescuers racing to save them. “We haven’t seen anything like this outside of an El Niño year,” said Shelbi Stoudt of the Marine Mammal Center in Moss Landing.

Local marine animal experts are searching for answers. “They get the live ones and we get the dead ones,” said Teri Sigler at Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. “We’re doing necropsies to try to solve the questions of what’s going on. Why are they here and why are they dying? And there is the question of whether another El Niño is coming.”

El Niño is the unseasonable warming of the Pacific Ocean off South America. The phenomenon changes the climate by causing more rain than normal in the Southwest, and less precipitation in the Northwest, said Bob Benjamin of the National Weather Service Office in Monterey. El Niños also can result in fewer bait fish and other marine life eaten by sea lions.

Not surprisingly, there also tends to be an increase in female sea lions and pup deaths during El Niño years, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. After birth, sea lions nurse for about 10 months before being let loose to hunt and feed on their own, Stoudt said. Sea lions are “opportunistic eaters,” meaning the carnivores will eat when food, which consists of perch, squid, herring and other fish found close to shore, is available.

Read more from the Santa Cruz Sentinel by clicking here.

June 16, 2009 · Filed Under Oceans & Beaches

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