Hoping to lure sea lions away from the boats and docks they have been overwhelming in King Harbor’s marinas, the city of Redondo Beach plans to install a mammal barge so they can congregate in the middle of the main channel.
Boaters and marina staff say the mammals have caused thousands of dollars in damage and been aggressive in their interactions with humans in the harbor.
In an attempt to wrangle the sea animals into one spot, the Redondo Beach City Council on Tuesday appropriated $53,000 from the city’s tidelands fund for the nearly 700-square-foot wooden dock and navigational light that will be able to support up to 116 sea lions. It will be installed within six weeks.
Sea lions are extremely social animals that prefer to snooze closely together on land or man-made environments such as marinas or buoys. When the bait barge in the harbor’s main channel sank in 2013, the sea lions lost their longtime resting location.
Since then, the animals have caused headaches for boat owners and marina staff. A few have reported that the mammals, when startled, have viciously lashed out at people nearby.
“We have a problem,” said Leslie Page, the property manager of Redondo Beach Marina. “I’ve had five of them wandering around the parking lot. I had one knock on the front door of the marina office next to R10 Social House (restaurant).
“They are really cute, I have to tell you, but they’re also very dangerous. Even the little guys have the bite of a pit bull,” she said, adding that they can transmit disease.
Kelly Mohan, a live-aboard boater in the harbor, said the issue has expanded beyond a nuisance.
“It’s completely out of control,” she said. “It’s a public safety issue. Yeah, they’re cute, but we need safety.”
Mohan said boat owners often go to step off their boats and are greeted by a sea lion.
“If you’re not ready for it, the sea lion can get scared and bite you,” she said.
Measures taken to offset the nuisance have been limited in success.
A railing made of metal piping and PVC along a city-owned harbor dock cost $4,600 on materials alone, city staff said. Although it was largely successful in preventing sea lions from leaping on to the dock, it is far too expensive to put up throughout the entire harbor, staff said.
Councilman Pat Aust, the city’s longtime former fire chief and harbor master questioned whether the proposed barge would be enough to tackle the problem.
“Back in the early 2000s, the harbor dock was totally inundated. You couldn’t see the deck because there were so many sea lions piled up on it,” Aust said. “I’m wondering if this is large enough.”
But Fire Chief and Harbor Master Robert Metzger said times are different.
A sprawling mass of warm water off the West Coast has interrupted the availability of food sources for the animals. Sea lion pups are popping up on beaches up and down the Southern California coast, starving and dying, unable to swim to the deeper, cooler water to find food and not able to fend for themselves. More than 1,800 sea lions have been stranded on state beaches as of March 15, with nearly 1,000 housed in only a handful of rehab centers throughout the state, including the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro. The strandings are expected to continue, as El Niño continues to heat up the water.
On a recent weekday, a sea lion mother sat next to her dead pup on one of the King Harbor docks, barking at sea gulls who attempted to move in.
Metzger said the staff predicts the barge mostly will be used by female adults and pups.
“I can tell you right now they are undersized because they are underfed,” he said. “That’s why we’re having so many ancillary problems with the sea lion pups.”
Without a barge in place, the sick, dehydrated adults and pups will continue to look for man-made spots to rest.
The Chadwick School’s marine biology class has been studying the population of sea lions in the harbor for a decade. Students said the sea lions need a resting spot or haul-out for a large portion of the day. After the bait barge sank two years ago, they had to find other options.
“If they have a place where they can go, there will be less stress on them to find a haul-out, and they’ll be out of (humans’) way and a lot less aggressive,” one student said.
Others questioned whether the new barge would simply attract an influx of sea lions to the harbor.
“The object isn’t to create a rookery down here,” Mayor Steve Aspel said. “It’s to get them off our docks. They’re destroying boats down there. This is not meant to create a Pier 39 like in San Francisco. We don’t want to suddenly have so many sea lions we can’t get rid of them some day.”
