San Diego SealWatch- La Jolla, CA - www.savesandiegoseals.com

Latest Seal News and Updates:

Hearing regarding the year-round rope permit to protect the seals

August 29, 2010 – 11:51 am

Dear All,

The year-round rope guideline permit application is moving forward to the hearing officer and it will be heard on:

September 15th, 8:30 am
202 C Street – 12th Floor, City Hall

Please attend if you can, public comments are allowed.

The City did not even apply for a pupping season beach closure permit yet, so please keep calling Mayor Jerry Sander’s office at (619) 236-6330, email JerrySanders@sandiego.gov to support Casa Beach closure for the pupping season and the placement of the all year round protection rope guideline for the seals. Ask why the permit process is delayed by the mayor, ASK WHY DID HE REFUSED THE CITY COUNCIL REQUEST FOR AN IMMEDIATE PLACEMENT OF THE ROPE ON EMERGENCY BASIS and stress the importance of the seal protection at Casa Beach.

We are informed that The City attorney’s office will draft a proposal to make a change to the San Diego Municipal Code in order to restrict people and dogs at the Children’s Pool beach during seal pupping season December 15-May 15 and that proposal will need to go before the City Council. I will let you know as soon s I know the date of this hearing.

Despite the continuous presence of the opposition forces, the seals are coming back for the night and can be seen in large numbers early in the morning

We enjoyed the presence of the seals ALL DAY on Friday, August 20 when nobody (with small exceptions) went down the beach – what a great day it was. And that’s what the beach looked like yesterday and this morning before the crowd of visitors invaded the seal rookery

More than 100 seals resting peacefully at Casa Beach

If you want to see the seals, come and visit very early in the morning (6 to 8 am) or at night, because during the day the beach looks like this:

Seals trying to haul out but are prevented from resting by the opposition. NOT AN EMERGENCY ACCORDING TO OUR MAYOR!

On Sunday, a few months old baby seal with a deep gash around its neck, apparently caused by fishing line, hauled up in the corner of the beach. People immediately started to crowd the injured animal, touch it and scare it back and forth into the ocean.

Crowd harassing a badly injured baby seal. NOT AN EMERGENCY ACCORDING TO MAYOR SANDERS!

I called the SeaWorld rescue team, but they told me that they would not be able to help the seal today, but would try to find it the next day. I pleaded with them stressing a bad condition of the young seal, the fact that it was a man-made injury and that the crowd was harassing the poor little seal: “this baby seal might not make it till tomorrow unless you help it” – I said, but they did not care.

I called the lifeguards and ask them to at least cone off the area where the seal was located so it would not be harassed – they promised to do it, but they never actually did anything to help the situation. I kept sending concerned visitors to their tower with the same request, with no results. The lifeguards refused to take any action such as putting up cones or a barrier, and instead told people that “volunteers” were handling crowd control and not to worry about it. The ranger of course was nowhere to be seen. The same thing then happened again when a young sea lion hauled up with a hook in its face.

Does the mayor really expect ordinary citizens to continue trying to do the impossible job of keeping people a safe distance from hauled up seals, which is only made necessary by his refusal to take action the council requested ?