Greater than 1,000 sea lions have gathered at San Francisco’s Pier 39 this spring, the most important herd in at the very least 15 years.
Mounds of floppy, delightfully ungraceful marine mammals have plopped themselves on to rafts alongside town’s pier, displaying themselves to the hundreds of vacationers who move by the realm every day.
In line with the workers on the pier, the gathering this 12 months has been drawn to a feast of anchovies within the bay. “With a gradual meals provide from a big faculty of anchovy, the ocean lions are additional lively!” the pier tweeted from its official account this week.
The charming pinnipeds have turn into a serious attraction within the metropolis since they first arrived on the pier about 35 years in the past. The primary – an enormous man that workers had nicknamed Flea Collar as a result of he had a bit of fishing internet caught round his neck – arrived in 1989. After which a number of hundred of his pals adopted.
Some years, as many as 1,700 sea lions at a time have stopped over on the pier. At different instances, there have been only a few hundred. For many who are unable to go to in particular person, the pier supplies a day by day dwell stream of seal exercise.
Lots of the males at Pier 39 could also be stopping there on their manner south, to the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California, the place they’ll meet up with females to mate, in response to Dan Costa, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz who specialises in marine mammals. “These are wandering, nomadic critters who are likely to work their manner north and work their manner south all year long,” Costa mentioned.
However researchers nonetheless don’t totally perceive the motion and migration patterns of sea lions alongside the western coast. Costa’s lab has just lately begun monitoring feminine and juvenile sea lions alongside the California coast, each to higher perceive the animals’ migration patterns and to see how their motion and foraging would possibly differ in response to ocean circumstances. Over time, researchers might additionally glean insights about how the local weather disaster and warming ocean temperatures will have an effect on the species.
Lately, together with throughout a marine heatwave off the US west coast that induced the formation of a heat “blob”, the fish that sea lions prey on grew to become concentrated in pockets, relatively than throughout a broader vary, Costa mentioned. Which may be one of many explanation why there are extra sea lions at spots like Pier 39 in some years than in others.
“However I wager quite a few these guys are frequent guests to Pier 39. In all probability it’s one in all their favorite locations, they usually preserve coming again for the nice meals,” mentioned Costa, not not like guests who cease by for a view of the bay and clam chowder in a bread bowl.
“And these sea lions are in all probability considering, ‘Oh have a look at all these vacationers!’” he mentioned.
