JACK FLEMMING | Los Angeles Times
ENVIRONMENT| WILDLIFE
La Jolla, California's coastline is being conquered. The colonizers made their home in the seaside neighborhood's rocks, terraces, beaches and caves.
They're sea lions -- and they're here to stay. The creatures started pupping -- having babies -- around Point La Jolla roughly a decade ago. Some longtime residents want the sea lions out, claiming California's coast belongs to its people. Activists want increased protection for the sea lions.
The once overhunted mammals are growing so large in number, they're expanding into a habitat humans ruled for more than a century. Experts say that as overcrowding and changing water temperatures disrupt the population, new sea lion colonies will form along the coast.
Experience for all senses
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The wild animals might weigh up to 500 pounds and they pack a brutal bite, but the first provocation hits you well before you step foot on the shore.
"This whole place is like a giant toilet," said Emily Hanson, 9, holding her shirt over her nose. Her family drove in from Escondido for a day at the beach, but decided to leave after she got a headache from the stench.
Sea lions, along with the pelicans and cormorants that roost in the area, poop constantly. The sun bakes the feces into the rocks and bluff s; you can smell it from blocks away.
The nearby Brockton Villa is a popular brunch and dinner spot. Owner Megan Heine said they experience the animals with all senses.
"They draw thousands of visitors to the area, which is great for business," she said. "The smell is not evident inside of our restaurant, but it's quite pungent at the street level and probably is a deterrent for folks to enjoy the area on some days."
The city of San Diego tried spraying microbial foam years ago, but the acrid odor returned.
A group called Citizens for Odor Nuisance Abatement sued the city in 2013, claiming the smell hurt businesses. A judge dismissed the suit.
There's also the sounds: guttural grunts, yelps, barks, screeches, wails and farts all day and night.
Coexisting on the coast
On a foggy Tuesday in October, a pair of pups do flips in the water as two females joust over who gets to lie on the biggest rock on the beach. The alpha male flops up and down the cove like a massive inchworm.
Federal law says to stay at least 50 yards away from sea lions, but since the beaches here are so small, experts advise a distance of 20 to 30 feet -- a guideline that goes largely unheeded.
Humans and animals lounge side by side in the sand and swim together in the waves.
As a sea lion pup climbs on the ledge at the bottom of the stairs and lies down in the sun, tourists swarm, pushing phones and cameras inches away from its face.
Carla Pennington, a volunteer with the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club Seal Society, swoops in and stands guard, warning onlookers not to get too close.
"The pups love the stairs, so I just try to make sure everyone keeps their distance," she said. "This is their home, but obviously we like to come here too. So we have to coexist."
Pups are born from late May to early July, and most mothers in the colony give birth in Point La Jolla, a rocky area closed to the public. Four of 44 pups died -- a typical mortality rate, said Robyn Davidoff , chair of the Sierra Club Seal Society.
The cove is less protected and more open to the public. Of the nine pups born there, seven died.
"Sea lion babies are like our own babies," Davidoff said. "They're extremely vulnerable at birth. They nurse for around a year, they can't swim at birth, and they can't eat solid food for about four months."
She said the pups died from unintentional human interference: people blocking access to land, causing pups to drown, or separating pups when their mothers are out getting food by crowding around them, forming unintentional blockades.
"This is an amazing place, but people are killing pups by loving them to death," she said.
La Jolla's new identity
La Jolla's sea lions -- about 250 to 350, according to the Sierra Club Seal Society -- make up only about 0.1% of the West Coast's total population but the eff ect is huge.
Videos of the animals went viral on social media. Busloads of tourists haul in every week, with visitors staying at hotels touting sea lion views and spending money at restaurants, coff ee shops and boutiques. Tours off er snorkelers and kayakers close-up views of the marine mammals. Gift shops sell sea lion stuff ed animals and keychains.
"I am very concerned that La Jolla is being run for tourists at the locals' expense," reader Melinda Merryweather wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribute in August.
Real estate agent Jay Becker said some clients move out because of the foul scent. "People will have units with outdoor patios or open windows," he said, "and they don't want to deal with the smell anymore."
However, he suspects the sea lions probably helped the housing market more than hurt it.
"Many of the properties I sell are second or third homes for people, and the novelty of the sea lions exceeds the negativity of the smell," he said.
Others are less enthused
"They're a plague," home-owner Jason Sanders said. "This is a beach town, not a zoo."
He said the smell, noise and droves of tourists altered the community's identity.
"I'd like to see the city step in and find a way to safely send the sea lions elsewhere," he said.
La Jolla Parks and Beaches, a nonprofit group, advocated for the city to remove sea lions from La Jolla Cove. "Our concern is a sea lion takeover," group President Bob Evans said. "If it continues, there will be nothing else the city can do but close the beach down entirely."
In 2023, the San Diego City Council voted to close public access to Point La Jolla yearround. But as more of the coastline closes, officials and wildlife advocates fear an uptick in violence against the animals.
Last September, a sea lion was found with a knife stabbed in its snout in Oxnard. In August, a sea lion was shot dead on Bolsa Chica State Beach.
Population explosion
Sea lions were once hunted by Native Americans, then killed for bounty by fishermen.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act, a 1972 federal law, made it illegal to hunt, kill or harass certain marine mammals. Since then, the West Coast sea lion population soared from about 90,000 in the 1970s to about 250,000 today. The vast majority breed on two of the Channel Islands: the largely uninhabited San Nicolas and San Miguel.
Sharon Melin, the lead sea lion biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the creatures are leaving the islands because of lack of food and space.
Once a breeding colony is established, she said, it's difficult to stop it. She said other coastal communities need to be prepared and proactive. Legal deterrents include fences, rails, lights and noisemakers.
"As habitats change and the climate changes, sea lions will be moving," Melin said. "They'll be looking for places to rear their young, and they'll show up in places we've never thought about."
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