San Francisco's seal lions disappear; are they in Oregon?

[depakid]

Around 600 sea lions hauled ashore Friday inside Sea Lion Caves, north of Newport. Question is, are they the same California sea lions that called San Francisco's Pier 39 home? Huge numbers of sea lions have shown up at Oregon's Sea Lion Caves near Florence.
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The headlines out of San Francisco read like an Agatha Christie plot:

"Sea lions mysteriously disappear from Pier 39."

"S.F.'s vanishing sea lions baffles experts."

"Where did the city's ever-present sea lions go?"

Yes, a big, blubbery mammalian mystery has brewed for weeks around San Francisco Bay. Now, clues point toward Oregon.

Or do they?

Every salty whodunit must start somewhere and this one begins a little more than 20 years ago, in September 1989, when California sea lions, Zalophus californianus, started consistently hauling their bulbous bods onto a dock at Pier 39, an attraction as thick with tourists as it is with San Francisco-themed tchotchkes. That month, only a handful of sea lions hung around, sunning, snoozing and inconveniencing fishermen.

By mid-January 1990, 150 of their friends had joined them. By February, they numbered about 250 and by March, more than 400. Fishing vessels moved out of the way, but that spring, so did the sea lions, migrating south to breeding grounds in the Channel Islands near Santa Barbara, Calif. That summer, the gargantuan beasts -- males grow to 7 feet and can reach 1,000 pounds -- returned, as they have annually, according to the Marine Mammal Center, a nonprofit rescue and research operation in Marin County, Calif.

Tourists may come to taste San Francisco's rambunctious character and sensuous fog, but for the sea lions, food and safety have been the draws. Until recently, winter herring runs provided plenty of forage. Orcas and great white sharks, which dine on sea lions, don't enter the busy bay.

The noisy, intelligent, playful, pungent mammals thrived. They grew so abundant that their original favorite dock submerged under their weight and fell apart. Knowing a good tourist draw when they saw it, the folks who operate Pier 39 provided new housing, a cluster of 10-foot-by-12-foot floats within camera clicking distance from shore. Sea lions squeezed aboard, barking their approval. The Marine Mammal Center got so many questions it opened a kiosk nearby. And for years, tourists stopped for a look and an earful.

On Oct. 23, 2009, volunteers counted more than 1,700 California sea lions at Pier 39.

Shockingly, by Thanksgiving fewer than two dozen remained. For the first time in 20 years, nearly all the extraordinarily social animals had flopped into the bay, slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge and disappeared. News outlets from Los Angeles to London mused over the mystery while San Franciscans wondered, had they gone?

Clue: Gaze ocean-ward along Oregon's central coast and you might notice vast rafts of sea lions frolicking, says Dan Harkins, general manager at Sea Lion Caves, between Yachats and Florence. The caves, more typically home to the larger Steller sea lions, have operated as a tourist attraction for 78 years, and "all of a sudden we're seeing numbers that nobody remembers seeing," he says.

Typically in January, 500 to 700 California and Steller sea lions hang out in and around the caves, feasting on anchovies, sardines and such. This week, Harkins says, estimates climbed toward 1,500.

Lost Beach, between the caves and Heceta Head, has been so jam-packed on some days that the sand was scarcely visible between the animals' chocolate or golden brown bodies. "We don't have license plates on 'em to be able to tell if they're from California," he says. "It's all speculation right now, but it seems to be tied in. They disappeared there. We've got record numbers up here."

Scientists are disinclined to jump to such a tidy conclusion.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/san_franciscos_seal_lions_disa.html

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. Goddamn rent was too high in San Francisco, so they moved north

I mean its not like sea lions have much income, unless they work at some marine park or whatever.

[emmadoggy]

2. I have the usual photos and video of the sea lions from my

trip to San Francisco a couple years ago. I loved seeing them. And now I'm even more glad I got the chance to.

[sandnsea]

3. Coos Bay too

Video to Coos Bay story, and pic and Florence story. It's not supposed to be so rainy on Sunday, will try to get up there and get pics.

http://florenceoregon.ning.com/

[marmar]

4. They got sick of all the cheesy tourists at Pier 39.

nt

[babydollhead]

5. we saw and smelled them in S.F. on oct 22

[depakid]

7. You want a really nice wiff, take the tour of Sea Lion caves

Whew...

(Yes, it's sort of "tourist trappy," but worth doing once).

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Now that we know about the earthquake..we understand why they left...