When fishing boat Capt. Chad Steffen spotted an animal floating in kelp at the surface of the ocean not far off San Onofre, he said he and two deckhands knew they needed sprang to action.
“Being out there as long as I have, you sort of know when an animal is struggling,” Steffen said, recalling the incident that occurred on Friday, April 29. “I saw green netting around its face and head. He was clearly in distress.”
Steffen circled his boat, the Clemente operated by Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching, a few times to get a better look. Then he, Mauricio Lopez and Stanley Filipowicz got to work as some of the fishermen onboard watched.
“We were just between fishing locations and most of the guys were down in the galley, but I had gone back up to check something on my line,” said Scott Allen, an Aliso Viejo resident who was out on the three-quarter-day trip to catch rockfish. “(Steffen) was circling and then he suddenly cut his engine and ran down to the back of the boat and leaned way over and I heard him yell, ‘I got him.’”
After a few tries, the animal was scooped into a landing net and the three hoisted it aboard the Clemente.
Allen watched as Steffen held the seal down and the two deckhands “carefully cut strand by strand” to free the animal. As they loosened its pointed muzzle, the animal tried to bite.
“He was very much agitated and would have bitten us,” Steffen said. “I grabbed him by the scruff and Stanley and Mauricio went to work cutting the net. It was all around his face and a couple of pieces went through his mouth like a bit of a horse.”
In less than two minutes, the seal was back in the water.
Once free, the animal swam around the boat a couple of times like “he was saying thank you,” Allen added.
The fishermen on board cheered and yelled.
“They were pretty stoked,” Steffen said.
At the time, Steffen thought the pinniped was a harbor seal or possibly a northern fur seal, but later in the day, Donna Kalez, who runs Dana Wharf, got a confirmation from the Pacific Marine Mammal Center that the animal was a threatened Guadalupe fur seal.
According to Kalez’s logs, the last time one of her staff spotted one of the rare seals was in 2019.
Kalez said her staff frequently helps entangled seabirds and other marine mammals such as sea turtles and dolphins.
“Everybody down here likes to help out,” she said. “They want to save marine life. We have a long history of disentangling sea life.”
Guadalupe fur seals have been found over the last several years emaciated and starving along parts of the California coast. In 2015, strandings were eight times greater than historical averages, leading the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare an “unusual mortality event.”
Commercial sealers hunted Guadalupe fur seals in the 1700s and 1800s to the point they were thought to be extinct in the early 1900s.
They were rediscovered on Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico in 1954 by researchers from the University of California. In recent years, though, some have been born on the more northern Channel Islands, which are known to be rookeries for sea lions.
They are typically found further off offshore.
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Fishing boat crew helps entangled Guadalupe fur seal while passengers watch - OCRegister
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