A young male sea lion was found wandering at dawn on the streets of San Francisco on Thursday. This is the second time that the starving pup was rescued from land.
The sea lion pup named Rubbish was found under a parked car across from the Marina Green and Small Craft Harbor this time. Last month, he was rescued by the Marine Mammal Center when he was spotted crossing a wide boulevard near the Golden Gate, USA Today reported.
The rescuers said that he will be brought to a rehabilitation facility in the Marin Headlands, the same facility that took care of him last month.
Sea lion pups stranded along the California coast is not rare. Rubbish is just one of the more than 1,800 sea lion pups rescued this year alone. While the rescuers were able to save most of them, 650 died of sickness or had to be euthanized due to their extremely poor condition. Scientists believe that the sea lion pups are leaving the waters because they are looking for food since their parents have abandoned them to move to colder waters.
"The mothers are now traveling longer distances to follow the fish into the colder areas and are leaving their pups for much longer stretches of time than usual," Laura Sherr, spokesperson for the Marine Mammal Center, told Discovery News. "We believe that the pups are leaving the islands to try to make it on their own, but, unfortunately, are too young and inexperienced to survive in the wild. Biologists on the Channel Islands have been weighing pups since September and say that 40 percent have either not gained weight or actually lost weight."
The number of sea lion pups stranding for 2015 is so much higher than previous years. The veterinary staff and volunteers of the center are worried that this trend will continue if we don't address the issue of climate change. Experts are now studying and looking for ways to stop these young animals from leaving their natural habitat.
