They’re huge, loud and smelly — and so they have taken over San Francisco’s touristy Pier 39.
In current days, some 1,100 to 1,200 anchovy-breathed, blubber-bodied sea lions have been counted flopping on and across the docks, Harbormaster Sheila Chandor stated Tuesday. That’s the very best quantity recorded in 15 years.
The pinnipeds — who’re cruising from as far north as southeastern Alaska all the way down to the Channel Islands for mating season — have swarmed the pier in such giant numbers due to a large faculty of anchovies swimming close to the Farallon Islands.
“There’s a feast happening on the market proper now,” Chandor stated.
The marine mammals, with their huge eyes and lengthy whiskers, have lengthy been welcomed at Fisherman’s Wharf, the place vacationers can’t appear to get sufficient of them.
They first began hauling out at Pier 39 in 1989. Boats had been moved out of their slips whereas the docks had been being reworked, leaving a number of area for sea lions in the hunt for a spot to relaxation.
They began coming en masse after the San Francisco Bay Space was rocked that October by the Loma Prieta earthquake, which killed no less than 63 folks and induced greater than $6 billion in injury. By January 1990, greater than 150 sea lions swarmed the docks, drawing vacationers who had prevented the world for months after the earthquake.
“The primary confirmed up once we wanted a lift, as a result of we had simply gone via the earthquake … and we had been dying on the vine, with no enterprise,” stated Chandor, who has labored on the pier since 1985. “It completely revitalized all of the enterprise on the wharf.”
The pier usually has a number of hundred sea lions, with as much as 700 or so within the spring, Chandor stated.
The present, large herd, which appears to be rising by the day, began displaying up in late April, she stated.
There haven’t been so many sea lions on the pier concurrently since 2009, when greater than 1,700 confirmed up, stated Adam Ratner, director of conservation engagement at the Marine Mammal Middle in Sausalito.
That 12 months was “a giant El Niño 12 months, with quite a lot of modifications in ocean well being … and quite a lot of fish proper in that space, so it was sort of just like the dinner bell ringing,” Ratner stated.
Ratner stated Pier 39 has grow to be “primarily a fuel station” for migrating sea lions, the place — protected from pure predators similar to orcas and nice white sharks — they will relaxation, sunbathe and fatten up earlier than taking place to the Channel Islands for some summer season love.
“Sea lions go to Pier 39 for lots of the identical causes folks do: It’s an incredible place to relaxation and hang around, and there’s a number of good meals round,” he stated.
Ratner stated the surge in wholesome sea lions is, on the floor, a great signal for the animals’ inhabitants and the well being of their habitat.
However it’s laborious to inform whether or not it’s a great indicator of the ocean’s total ecological well being, Ratner stated.
“The deeper thriller is, why is that huge faculty of fish on the market?” he stated. “Is it that there are extra fish, which might be incredible? Or possibly the fish have all congregated in a single place, whereas they need to be someplace else.”
Over the last sea lion surge in 2009, there was additionally a giant faculty of anchovies off the bay — however meals deserts for the ocean lions elsewhere, Ratner stated. Later that 12 months, the pinnipeds, particularly youthful, smaller ones, struggled.
Sea lions, he added, are like “sentinels of the ocean,” offering clues about what’s affecting the briny deep, similar to toxins that sicken them and shifting fish populations that they chase.
Chandor stated there appear to be different fish, not simply anchovies, massing off the coast as a result of harbor officers have seen upticks in dolphins and pelicans in current weeks too.
The blubbery horde on Pier 39, she stated, in all probability will filter out by early June, when “the decision of the breeding season will name them away.”
Or, one would hope.
The “very vocal” sea lions are blissful, well-fed and don’t appear to need to transfer a lot, Chandor stated.
Often, the floating rafts the place they lounge and poop are power-washed weekly. However there have been so many sea lions in current days that the cleansing has ceased as a result of shifting them “would simply create mayhem,” Chandor stated.
“It’s fairly smelly proper now.”
