Wildlife experts are urging Marin beachgoers to keep their distance as harbor seal pupping season begins in the Bay Area.
While a lone harbor seal pup on the beach may appear to be stranded and helpless, usually its mother is just offshore foraging for food and keeping a watchful eye.
“If the mom feels the pup has been interfered with in any way, they will not come back to it,” said Giancarlo Rulli, spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands.
An abandoned pup is likely to die of starvation or dehydration unless animal rescue crews intervene.
Marin County is home to the largest population of harbor seals in California, excluding the Channel Islands. About 20% of the population resides in the Point Reyes National Seashore, which is also the state’s largest harbor seal breeding ground.
After returning to the Bay Area to breed, the harbor seals rear their pups from about March through end of June. The seals can often be found on popular beaches including the Bolinas Lagoon, the Sausalito waterfront, Drakes Bay, Dillon Beach and Tomales Bay.
To the alarm of wildlife rescuers, there has been a recent spike in the number of human interactions with harbor seal pups in recent years. From 2020 to 2021, reported interactions nearly doubled along the coastline between Mendocino County and San Luis Obispo, increasing from 42 incidents to 79, according to the Marine Mammal Center.
“We are seeing interactions of folks taking selfies, getting too close, pouring water on them, dragging them by the flippers — pretty severe cases of these types of interactions,” said Rulli, adding that the number of cases was likely underreported.
In Marin, these incidents were most commonly reported at Bolinas Lagoon, the Sausalito waterfront and Dillon Beach, Rulli said.
Harassing seals is a violation of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which can result in penalties of up to $11,000 in fines and a year in prison.
To prevent harbor seal pups from being abandoned, Point Reyes National Seashore has closed access to some areas of the park from March through the end of June.
For areas that aren’t closed, wildlife experts recommend beachgoers to keep a minimum distance of 300 feet from a seal and an even further distance if the seals have become aware of them.
Beachgoers are also asked to keep their dogs on leashes. Any person who thinks a seal is in distress is asked not to intervene and to call the Marine Mammal Center at 415-289-SEAL (7325) or the NOAA Enforcement Hotline 800-853-1964 if they see a seal being harassed.
So far, about 16 harbor seal pups have been rescued and brought to the Marine Mammal Center for treatment. The center usually sees about 40 to 80 pups per year, Rulli said.
“These pups are at their most vulnerable state in life,” he said. “They can easily become stressed and become abandoned by their mothers if humans or dogs get too close. You do play a very important role in the conservation of these marine mammals just by keeping that safe distance, using that zoom on your camera and giving us a call.”
Stated to be the world’s largest hospital for marine mammals, the Marine Mammal Center responds to incidents along 600 miles of the California coastline from Mendocino County to San Luis Obispo County.
The center recently received a $500,000 allocation in the federal spending bill passed by Congress and President Joe Biden in March. The center’s chief external relations officer, Jeff Boehm, said such an allocation is “remarkable” considering it usually only received federal dollars through competitive grants.
“A fund like this allows our trained responders to get out on the beaches in a timely manner,” Boehm said. “It’s an undergirding of all the work we are prepared to do. On top of that, it allows us to continue our powerful research agenda and continue to hone the medical care and training that we do.
We’ve emerged as a world-class marine mammal teaching hospital,” he said.
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See a seal pup on Marin beaches? Keep your distance, wildlife experts say - Marin Independent Journal
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