280-pound sea lion forsakes ocean for farm
280-pound sea lion forsakes ocean for farm
By LISA M. KRIEGER
San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News
A long, strange trip that probably started with a wrong turn at San Francisco's Pier 39 ended Monday morning when a farmer found the traveler near a muddy San Joaquin Valley cotton field.
There sat a tired -- but feisty -- California sea lion.
The marine mammal was 60 miles from the ocean -- as the crow flies. But as the sea lion swims, it apparently had to go about 135 miles up San Pablo Bay, through the delta past Stockton and down the San Joaquin River. When he ran out of water, he waddled across up to a mile of farmland before being discovered.
``We were pretty surprised,'' said Greg Gerstenberg of the California Department of Fish and Game, who got a 7 a.m. call for help from the California Highway Patrol. ``I knew the location, so I figured it must be a calf. Or a beaver. Or anything else.''
As news traveled of his discovery, a crowd of police officers, local farmers and delighted onlookers gathered around the wayward animal.
``He was pretty feisty,'' said Sue Andrews, manager of a Moss Landing-based clinic for the Marine Mammal Center, a private non-profit hospital for injured sea mammals that is based in Sausalito. A young male, ``he's alert and in good health. He's a wild animal. Once they're cornered, they don't like it.''
Displeased, the 280-pound sea lion did what sea lions do -- looked for a place to climb -- and hoisted himself atop the hood of the CHP car, where he basked in the morning sun.
The officers christened him Chippy.
Once biologists arrived, it took a dozen people to scoot him from the car, corral him with a net and herd him into a big steel box. He was taken by pickup truck to Moss Landing, where he spent Monday night resting. This morning, he is to be driven to Marine Mammal Center veterinarians in Sausalito, where he will be evaluated. When he is ready, he will be released at Point Reyes National Seashore, far from human interference.
No one is quite sure where he was headed or why he went there.
This time of year, sea lions have returned home from their migration to their breeding grounds in Southern California's Channel Islands and Baja California. And they won't leave again until late spring.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is crisscrossed by 1,000 miles of channels, sloughs and creeks around artificial islands created from a marsh earlier this century.
``They are very intelligent and curious, and if he saw an interesting-looking fish, he may have just followed it up the river,'' Andrews said.
Chippy was seen Sunday morning in the San Joaquin River at Fremont Ford State Recreation Area, then later at Los Banos State Waterfowl Area. Gerstenberg said he navigated Salt Slough, which has many sand bars and is less than a foot deep in several places.
His journey ended Monday morning on the shoulder of quiet Henry Miller Road east of Los Banos. A farmer spotted him and called the CHP. Chippy was fortunate: Californians of an earlier day might have feasted on him.
The sea lion is very tired but seemed to have suffered no injuries on the long journey, biologists said. They believe he dined on bass and other river fish. Sea lions have no problem surviving, for a while, in fresh water, they say.
It's not the first time a sea lion has gone exploring up the delta. Ten years ago, a 304-pound sea lion wandered up a narrow, five-mile ditch and was rescued from a muddy creekbed near Byron in Contra Costa County. More recently, several have been sighted in the Sacramento River in Sacramento.
No one will ever know what inspired Chippy to leave his friends and cold Pacific waters to travel upstream past boats, bridges and wooden pilings to end up alone in a muddy field, biologists say.
``We'll never really know how he got there,'' Andrews said. ``And we have no way of asking him that question.http://www.modbee.com/ips_rich_conte...b1sealion2.jpg
