MYTHS VERSUS FACTS:
- The Children’s Pool is a man-made beach that was invaded by the seals in the 1990’s.
- Although the seawall at Casa Beach was built by humans, the beach itself is natural, and was a home for seals for thousands of years before people settled in Southern California. The seals in this area were hunted almost to extinction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so the several hundred animals in the La Jolla colony are the last brave remnants of a population that once numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Harbor seals were documented in the area (once named “Seal Rock Point”) in the 1800s and early 1900s – see the old map to the left from the San Diego Historical Society research archives. - Casa Beach was intended to be used by children. The issue is respect for Ellen Browning Scripps’ gift to the children of San Diego
- Children love the seals and want these appealing animals to have a home. In1999 Caitlin Sussman conducted a 4th grader’s poll among the La Jolla elementary school children: of the 1,000 elementary students polled, 911 children signed in favor of the seals.
Kids for Animals –2005
The petitions make the following plea, “there are lots of places where I can swim in San Diego, but only one place where I can see seals and their babies in the wild– Casa Beach in La Jolla! DON’T DREDGE FOR ME! LET THE SEALS BE!”
Young people instinctively understand what adults may need to be taught-we all have a place on this planet, and humans need to leave some space for animals to survive. Watching the seals in San Diego is a unique and educational experience for children.
Much of the argument in favor of dredging the beach and turning it into exclusively human use has come from adult ocean swimmers and SCUBA divers, SCUBA instructors in particular who would like to use Children’s Pool for their courses. Ellen Browning Scripps certainly did not donate the money to build the seawall in order to help commercial enterprises.
People who use the slogan “seals versus children” are either cynically trying to manipulate emotions to secure votes for their own goal or they are sincerely expressing their negative attitude towards nature and their opinion that humans are superior to other species. This attitude contributes to nearly every aspect of the ongoing environmental crisis.
We believe that nature can be valued even in the heart of the city and because La Jolla is a tourist destination, this is a lesson we can share with the world.
- Allowing harbor seals to stay at the Children’s Pool, violates the terms of the tidelands trust of 1931 (judge’s Pate decision in O’Sullivan’s court case).
- In 1931 the State of California deeded the Casa Beach to the City on San Diego in a grant that stated:
“That said lands shall be devoted exclusively to [1] public park, [2] bathing pool for children, [3] parkway, [4] highway, [5] playground and [6] recreational purposes and [7] to such other uses as may be incident to, or convenient for the full enjoyment of, such purposes.” (Chapter 937, Laws of 1931; “An act granting certain tide and submerged lands of the State of California to the city of San Diego, San Diego County, in said state, upon certain trusts and conditions”; Section 1 (a).
Bathing pool for children is only one of the purposes mentioned in the grant. The Judge’s Pate decision of August 2005 and the court of appeal decision of September 2007 to return the beach to its 1941 condition and return in exclusively for human use was asking for an inappropriate remedy, as the City was granted discretion as to how to utilize the beach.
On February 27th, 2009, after being contacted by APRL/SealWatch , Senator Christine Kehoe introduced legislation, SB428, co-sponsored by Assemblymembers Fletcher and Saldaña, to amend the outdated 1931 Tidelands Grant. The bill lists a “marine mammal park for the enjoyment and educational benefit of children” as a permissible use of Casa Beach. The bill passed the Senate April 16, 2009 30-4 and the Assembly 71-0 on July 9th, 2009.
On July 20, 2009, State Court judge Yuri Hofmann ordered the City to disperse the seals from Casa Beach within 72 hours by using amplified dog barking sound – this decision was blocked by Governor Schwarzenegger who signed SB 428 into law the same day.
Now that the State Legislature amended the outdated 1931 Tidelands grant, starting January 1st, 2010, the date when the new law officially went into effect, the City of San Diego has a discretion to create a marine mammal park at Casa Beach for the seals.
- The Children’s Pool is the only safe beach in La Jolla for children to swim.
- Despite its name, Casa Beach (also known as Children’s Pool) is not a safe place for kids to swim. The offshore rocks and strong waves that surge from the ocean here endanger even strong swimmers, who are rescued by lifeguards on a regular basis. Young swimmers will find safer and more enjoyable water play at other nearby beaches and pools.
- Shared use policy has been established at Casa Beach. Can’t we share the beach with the animals?
- With 73 miles of recreational shoreline in San Diego County, surely humans can allow seals undisturbed use of the 200 foot stretch of sand at Casa Beach.
Shared use of the beach by humans and seals does not work, and never has. The majority of seals will not haul out on the beach when people are present.
NMFS is not in favor of joint use and would like the City to choose the proper beach use management program for either seals or humans (Lecky’s testimony dated August 19, 2003).
- Can’t seals go somewhere else?
- If someone tells you the seals can go “somewhere else”, ask exactly where that somewhere else may be. All the other beaches up and down the coast are in frequent use by people. There are some isolated rocks and pocket beaches that are covered at high tide, none of which are suitable for pupping.
- Seals used to rest on the Seal Rock – can’t they just relocate there?
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Courtesy of Jim Moore, PhD
If a picture is worth a thousand words; here’s an essay on the answer:
In the first of these two photos, the rising tide has sent a wave into the line of seals on the low rocks just south of Seal Rock. Note the position of the seals on the left side.
Courtesy of Jim Moore, PhD
And look where they are now. The problem with intertidal rocks is that as the tide rises, seals get swept off; as the tide falls, it becomes potentially a long drop for a not-very-nimble seal to face if a predator (or well-intentioned but intrusive human) appears.
How would you scramble up and down this rock at low tide if you were a seal?
- Seals pollute our ocean and seal fecal coliform bacteria is a health risk.
- Seals are a vital link in the ocean ecosystem.
Their feces, far from “polluting”, nourishes the off shore kelp beds that support abundant sea life. The chain of marine life includes seals, sea birds, fish, dolphins, whales, sea turtles, shellfish, and ocean plants. Each species is needed for the system to flourish. The danger to our oceans, and to the health of swimmers, comes from human pollution: untreated sewage spills, storm drain runoff, plastic bags and fish nets, agricultural runoff, toxic chemicals, mercury, and the other unnatural substances we discard into the oceans in staggering quantities. By protecting the seals, we are respecting the ocean and its inhabitants.
Coliform bacteria are used as indicators of land-based fecal contamination, often a sign of human fecal waste, which of course, can carry human pathogens. The method is simply not designed to be applied to sources of known point contamination by organisms (seals) that do not carry diseases of risks to humans (Jim Moore, PhD). Please see “Microbial indicators of water quality”
- There are too many seals – why protect them? Will they invade other beaches?
- The minimum size of the California seal population is about 45,000 . Once hunted to near extinction, seals started making their “come back” only after the establishment of the MMPA (the Marine Mammal Protection Act) in 1972 their population is fairly stable with the annual growth of only about 2 to 3%. With the overwhelming growth of the human population on the other hand, there is no risk of wildlife “invading” our beaches. On the contrary: we experience destruction of natural habitat of all other species at the fastest rate in human history.
- Why is the law protecting marine mammals not enforced at Casa Beach?
- There is no legal reason that seals cannot have adequate protection at Casa Beach. Seals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is enforced very rarely at Casa Beach [Crayton case]. NMFS claims they lack adequate resources to enforce the law, with only one local agent for the whole city of San Diego.
- A seal rookery will increase the risk of shark attack.
- Shark attacks in the San Diego area are extremely rare. Using beach attendance data from 68 US lifeguard agencies, the relative risk associated with ocean use in the year 2000 is as follows:
- Drowning fatalities: 1 in 3.5 million beachgoers
- Shark Attack fatalities: 0 in 264.1 million.
If the seals at the Children’s Pool were to triple the local fatality rate, the rate would go from 0.013/year to 0.034/year.
The shark attack fatality rate can be checked at International Shark Attack file. - Dredging the beach (sand removal project) will make the beach cleaner and safer.
- The only way to make the Children’s Pool beach “cleaner” is to reduce the numbers of seals and seabirds on the beach. There is no evidence that sand removal will get rid of the seals (birds won’t go anywhere ether): site fidelity is extremely strong among these marine mammals and the Children’s Pool seals have been coming back to their breeding grounds despite frequent human harassment for many years. The dredging project will make the beach area smaller for both human and seals (or seals and humans will find themselves in a close proximity on a smaller beach which will cause even more serious management problems, e.g. seal harassment by visitors, accidental bites).
The dredging project is a huge monetary commitment (estimated cost $$850,000 plus bi-annual maintenance cost) with very limited success. The negative consequences are unpredictable: potential problem with pinnipeds hauling out on nearby beaches, cliff erosion. The city departments do not have the resources to deal this type of management should this escalate.
