How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 057: Sea Lion Pups Washing Up On California Beaches Underweight and Weak
The Marine Mammal Centre is currently home to a record number 85 seal lion pups who washed up on northern California beaches this year, underweight and weak. Today on the podcast I hypothesize why and discuss what you can do about it.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session57
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 57. Seal Pups are washing up on the beaches of Northern California, emaciated and weak. That is what we're going to be talking about today on Tuesday's episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, so stay tuned. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, can't get the song Bad Blood out of his head, Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Your voice for the ocean. My name is Andrew Lewin. I am your host of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, founder of SpeakUpForBlue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. I almost messed up that intro. I used to mess it up when I first started back in June, and for a while there, I was kind of pumping them out, but I kind of messed up there. But that's all right, because that's what we're here at. We're all about the content, we're all about learning about the ocean and what's happening and becoming more aware, and that's what we have today. It's not great news, but it's news that we need to know about coming from the Pacific Ocean again. I know we talked about it yesterday, but it just needs to be, that issue needs to be aware. People need to be made aware of it, and I am here to do that for you, and we're going to talk about maybe ways that you can help out in the future, and I'm hoping to get more interviews with that. But before we get into the show, I want to talk to you about our store, our online store. If you haven't listened to the podcast or you're not aware of, you've been listening to the podcast and you're not aware of our store, that means you haven't been listening properly, because I've been announcing that we've had a store up for the last couple of weeks. It's an online store. It's through spreadshirt.com, a really great social enterprise, which we like to work with because they really take care of their employees, they really look out at the manufacturing, how they make their shirts and everything like that, to make it environmentally and socially responsible as possible. So we have an online store where you can buy t-shirts, essentially ocean swag and merchandise. So t-shirts, we have travel mugs, at-home mugs, we have iPhone cases, all sorts of things that have different issue warnings or raising awareness kind of sayings on there. And we're going to have more in the future, we just keep coming up with more and more. So you can go there and by purchasing any of our merchandise, you do two things. One, you help start the conversation of ocean awareness and ocean conservation. You help start that conversation just by using the items. If you wear a t-shirt that says keep calm and conserve the ocean, I have that t-shirt. People come up to me all the time, I was like, what do you mean by that? Like, what's the shirt trying to say? And I talk to them, I tell them all about what's happening with the ocean, I raise some ocean issues and I tell them about some of the solutions and we have a great conversation about it. So you raise awareness of what's happening in the ocean by just using the items. The other thing you do is you actually support our partner financially because every time you buy an item, all the revenue we make after cost goes towards our partner, sea turtles forever. And sea turtles do two things again, they do, they work with local communities in Central America to protect sea turtle nests from poachers. They also work with the local community to convert the poaching business, which is not very sustainable to a ecotourism business, which is more sustainable not only for the sea turtles, but for the communities. As you may or may not know, sea turtles, there's seven species, they're all at risk at some level, whether it be endangered or so forth, or special concern or anything like that. They're in trouble and we need to protect them and they nest a lot along the Pacific coast and the Caribbean coast of the Central America. So sea turtles forever goes down, they're a very small organization, but they have volunteers that go down and help protect these nesting sites that are along the beaches and they do a great job of it and they do a great job working with the local community. So we want to reward them for doing that. They also, the other thing they also do is they help with beach cleanups, they've created this innovative tool that sifts through and catches microplastics. Now if you don't know, microplastics are like these shards of plastic that have been broken down from the ocean, or they've been broken up in some sort of way in the in the waste management process, they end up on beaches, either most likely washed up either through rivers or from the ocean. They land on beaches, they're very hard to clean up because there's such small pieces and so many of them, but they get into the digestive systems of sea turtles, of marine mammals, of other fish like, or of fish like sharks and tuna and any other fish that you can name off. They end up in there, either they get caught in their digestive tract and choke them and or their savvings and choke them and they could die or they get into their stomachs and they break down and there's toxins in there and those toxins accumulate in their body the more they eat and as those fish get eaten up through the food chain, those toxins kind of bioaccumulate in those in the larger fish and larger predators and then eventually those predators will die from a toxicity problem. So what this tool does, it picks up all these microplastics that cause so much havoc in the sea and they've been so good at it. Those tools have been so good at that state governments are now starting to implement them in their beach cleanups, which is fantastic. So we want to help them help the ocean and we're going to do that financially. As Speaker for Blue, we're going to help them in the new year work on their projects and help complete their projects by prying them in kind support, which is going to be a lot, a lot of fun. Stay tuned for that announcement coming up soon. But that's it for now. If you want to go to the shop and you want to buy the merchandise after you listen to this podcast, you can do so by going to www.speakupforblue.com/shop. All you have to do is SHOP and just buy the merchandise and you're helping ocean conservation just by buying the merchandise. So thank you very much for that and for the people who have already bought. I really appreciate it. So we're going to get into the show today and it's a little bit of a depressing scene. And I don't like talking about depressing scenes on Tuesdays or Mondays like we have in, but it had to be said, it has to be done. Earlier in the new year, there were a number of sea lines that washed up on beaches that were dead and they were underweight and there was a big problem and a lot of the blame was warming oceans and El Nino year caused their food source to go north and these seals did not go north, right? So what's happening is they didn't have enough food and they weren't getting fed. So they were very weak, they were very underweight, they eventually died and they washed up on beaches. It was a big mass sort of death that was there. Now unfortunately, there was an article published on a bunch of news sites November 21st where it was titled record number of stranded seal pops were found on northern California shores. Now these are seal pops people. These are little baby seal. If you look at the pictures, they look absolutely adorable, big, black eyes. They're just tiny. They've got the little flippers, very furry, look very cuddly, you know, these are things you do not want to see underweight. Now you got to remember that seal pops in California, especially they need a lot of fat. They need a lot of blubber on them to survive the cold waters of the cold California waters. And you've seen videos that where you see seal pops actually come up on boats or kayaks to actually they do that to warm up. And these sea turtles, sorry I have sea turtles on my mind, these sea lions are actually normally found up in the California islands or up in the oceans. But this time they were actually on the shore, they washed up on shore. They were quote unquote, you know, described as emaciated and weak. And they were in record numbers. Now there's the Marine Mammal Center who takes in injured marine mammals or underweight marine mammals, weak marine mammals, bring them into their center, rehabilitate them and then release them. They're very good at that. A very good organization. And I'll put the link to the Marine Mammal Center in the blog post. They're a fantastic organization. They've been taking in seal pops. They've had in 2006, they had a record number of pups and it was 31 pups. And that was they were about four or five months old. Now they have more than double. They have 85 pups that just that have come up in the fall and that have been stranded because they've just been underweight and weak. And this is because there's a lack of food source. This is because there's just not enough food in their area that they like. You know, it was very interesting. I don't know if it's the same as sea lions. But when we had Dr. Naomi Rose on the show back in episode 12, yeah, episode 12 I believe session 12, you go speak up for blue.com session 12. They had we were talking about how the orca populations in Washington state, just off the coast of Washington state, were very particular about their diet. They only liked Chinook salmon. All they would eat. They wouldn't eat anything else. So when the Chinook salmon population would dip, their population would dip. And when the Chinook salmon population went up, the orca population went up. Right now coupled with with a cumulative impact of other things going on, toxicity problems, noise problems, it had a very big strain on that population. So the recovery wouldn't be as great when the Chinook salmon kind of went back up. But they were very tied to that. I have a feeling the sea lions are the same thing. I can't prove that because I don't have any scientific evidence, but that's sort of my hypothesis is the sea lion population in Northern California is is experiencing a lack of food right now, a lack of prey. And I have a feeling that's because of it's because of warming oceans, changing oceans, so it's changing the distribution pattern of populations. And we saw that a little bit in an article I don't remember what the episode was, but I talked about seals and what was happening. And there's a shift in species in their preferred species to eat. And they ended up coming up and washing up on the beach and dying. And that was that was due to that. I'll try and find the episode and put on the podcast episode and put it on the on the blog post. But that's essentially what's been what's I think is happening here. And this is dangerous. I mean, we're losing the seal pops. They're an apex predator. They're very, they're very important predator in the system and they're starting to die off. Now, I don't know if this is just going to be a dip in, you know, in the population, if these, if these animals don't recover. But I am glad that, you know, it might not happen because of the marine mammal center organizations like the marine mammal center, which are found all over California, really take in these week and stranded seal pops. They don't show them off to the public. They actually just kind of keep them, you know, get them fed, bring them back to their normal weight, hopefully, if they, if they respond, and then they work on releasing them as soon as possible. So organizations like that really help out, you know, the seal pops, but we really have to monitor the beaches. And I know, you know, the US government, California government have a lot of, a lot of stranding monitors, people out there to monitor to make sure that when they find these, when these pups first come up on shore, they're actually not, you know, easy pickings for other predators. They don't just die right away. They can come in, luckily they can breathe air, but they can come in and they can bring them back to their facilities and get them ready to go unless they can, unless they can be released right back out into the wild. But usually when they wash up, it means that there's a big problem. So we really need to watch out for these animals. These animals are, you know, are very important animals in the food web. You know, I talk about the food web all the time, but they regulate specific, they're predators. They're fish predators that they eat or they're mollusks or, you know, anything that they eat, they regulate that. And that will, if this population dips or, you know, is gone, then it'll throw off the balance of the food web that we know and love, which can throw off stability of specific habitats and change the habitats that we know and love, which can change fisheries, which can change the economics of the coast, you know, has a big repercussions. So monitoring these, these strandings, monitoring these weak sea lions is very important. Running them back in the water healthy is extremely important. And so we appreciate the marine mammal center for all the work that they've been doing. So shout out to the marine mammal center for that. Their executive director, if I can find the name Jeff Bohm, who's the center's executive director, you know, he was saying about them, he says, you know, they're adorable, but on the other hand, there are these little bags of skin bones and you don't want to talk about baby seal pups like that. So hopefully that these animals will get, will recover, they'll respond to the feeding and they'll get bigger and they'll be able to be released back into the ocean safe and sound and be able to continue, you know, proliferating off the food web and doing the role that they do in the ocean. So that's it for the show today. Remember, if you want to go and do something for the ocean, you can do so by going to our online store at speakupforblue.com/shop, that's SHOP, and every time you buy an item, you help not only sea turtles, not only cleaning up beaches, but you raise awareness of ocean issues just through wearing or using our items. So go right there, right now at speakupforblue.com/shop and you can buy the items and help the ocean right away. Until next time, you've been listening to speakup for Blue Podcast, I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, happy conservation.