A huge influx of California sea lions, some of whom are believed to have fled San Francisco's Pier 39 in late November, have turned up on the coast of Oregon at a protected habitat and tourist attraction called Sea Lion Caves.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Scott Ellson, the operations manager for Sea Lion Caves. "It's unbelievable."
Sea Lion Caves typically sees a few hundred sea lions at this time of the year. Starting in November, nearly 4,000 animals were counted basking in the area.
Steve Saubert
After hundreds of sea lions disappeared from San Francisco's Pier 39, a large number of the animals have turned up on the Oregon coast.
It was in late November when workers at Sausalito, Calif.'s Marine Mammal Center first noticed a precipitous drop in the number of sea lions who, for the past 20 years, have populated San Francisco's Pier 39.
Tourists from all over the world lined up to take photos and video of the sea lions, often holding their noses at the creatures' fishy, pungent odor. But around the last week of November, the sea lion population went from 927 to 20. Days later, not a single sea lion could be seen at the pier.
The sea lions disappeared in a mass exodus that baffled marine biologists and disheartened the community.
"Their primary objective is to forage for food," said Jim Oswald, communications manager for the Marine Mammal Center. "We suspect that they are traveling to find a source of food."
While Oswald declined to speculate on whether the absence of sea lions from Pier 39 represented anything more than a temporary phenomenon, he did note that San Francisco recently suspended herring fishing in the area because of a decline in the fish population.
At Sea Lion Caves, meanwhile, the spike in the number of sea lions isn't the only sign that the food supply may not be a problem in the waters off the Oregon coast.
"Cormorants, which are usually gone by now, are still here in great number," Ellson said. "And pelicans, too. I've never seen a pelican here this late in the season."
