[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS-WATERQUALITY-6/19/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

June 19, 2009

 

 

4. Water Quality –

 

 

Sick sea lions present a mystery -

San Francisco Chronicle

 

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Sick sea lions present a mystery

San Francisco Chronicle – 06/19/09

By Jane Kay

 

Fluctuating ocean conditions may be depleting the food supply of young sea lions that are turning up skinny and ill on California beaches, mirroring the fate of Brandt's cormorants earlier this spring.

The animal strandings are so numerous that the newly expanded Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito can't keep up. Only those young sea lions most in need of help are being brought in for treatment - up to 20 a day - leaving others to try to make it on their own, center representatives say.

Scientists agree that the youngsters, born nearly a year ago on the Channel Islands off Southern California, aren't getting enough food. But they're at a loss to determine whether the sea lions' favorite foods - northern anchovies and sardines - are hard to find because they're moving south in response to falling and rising ocean temperatures. That's the suspected scenario for the Brandt's cormorants. More than 500 of the birds, which also eat the anchovies and sardines, were picked up starving or dead in April and May by the Farallones Beach Watch program.

Or scientists wonder whether a U.S. record number of pups born last year on the Channel Islands means there are more around to fail during the sensitive transition from nursing to hunting for food on their own.

Drawing global interest is yet another theory: that the marine mammals and the seabirds are signaling an early warning of an El Niño, the warm-water current from the tropical Pacific.

El Niño brings rain. But it would also suppress the vigorous upwelling of nutrients in the California Current, stretching from Baja California to Vancouver, needed to produce abundant krill, fish and other aquatic life.

The last big El Niño occurred in 1997-98, starving thousands of marine mammals and seabirds from a host of species along the Pacific Coast. Rain doused Northern California, heavy snow fell on the East Coast and hurricanes brewed in the Atlantic. An El Niño is overdue, scientists say.

As of Thursday, the Marine Mammal Center had 136 patients in its new $32 million center, which opened to the public Monday.

Of the patient load, 85 were sea lions receiving nourishment through feeding tubes and treatment for organ failure and other problems. By comparison, there were 53 sea lions under care two weeks ago.

"They're just too weak to try to forage. You can see their bones," said center spokesman Jim Oswald. So many beach reports are coming in that the center has to choose where to respond. There aren't enough trained rescue crews or vehicles to bring in - or even check on - every animal, he said.

Lack of resources

That was the case June 12 when Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was walking with his spouse, Lynne, on Baker Beach in San Francisco and came upon a sea lion with an injured tail, probably from a boat strike. He called the center but was told that the staff didn't have the resources to come by immediately.

"It's sad because you want to help," Benioff said. "It's a mammal. It's like looking into the eyes of your golden retriever."

So far this June, the center has received more than 1,200 calls - more than twice the number of calls for this period last year.

The center's territory stretches 600 miles along the coast, and it has branches in Morro and Monterey bays.

"We believe it's food supply," said Joe Cordero, a biologist with National Marine Fisheries Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

His theory is that the burgeoning California sea lion population of 300,000 is producing so many pups that more of the yearlings are showing up on the beaches after weaning at 6 months to 1 1/2 years.

Mark Lowry, research fishery biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla (San Diego County), echoed Cordero's assessment.

"There was a record number of pups born last year - 59,000 - which were recently weaned. The fact that some of these weaned pups are struggling is not surprising. Not all survive to adulthood."

Water getting warmer

That could be the case, other scientists agree. But other possibilities are the fluctuating ocean temperatures, some related to global warming. Surface temperatures had remained low for most of the spring. But in recent weeks - about the time that the sea lions started showing up on the beaches - the ocean temperatures rose in the tropical Pacific from about 50 degrees to 65 degrees.

The Climate Prediction Center, run by the National Weather Service, in early June noted that sea surface temperatures were increasing across the equatorial Pacific, and anomalies in heat content typically precede the development of El Niño. Current observations, recent trends and some forecast models indicate that conditions are favorable for a transition to El Niño conditions during June through August. The next forecast is expected July 9.

"The water went from being pretty cold to pretty warm in a couple of weeks. It's been spiking all over the place," said William Sydeman, a biologist and president of the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research in Petaluma.

Even though there isn't a full-blown El Niño, he said, predators - such as marine mammals and seabirds that feed on fish - "oftentimes will send signals. They'll start to respond actually before you see changes in the physical environment. They integrate everything that happens in the food web."

Ocean temperatures

The National Marine Fisheries Service's yearly trawl brought in valuable information on temperature and fish in the Gulf of the Farallones between May 28 and June 14. The water was around 50 degrees, moderately cool in the California Current. The trawls caught good numbers of juvenile rockfish, hake and lingcod as well as krill, all cool-water species. For a second year, anchovies were absent and there were few sardines. The anchovies favored by sea lions and seabirds head to normal spawning grounds in Southern California when the waters are cool. Sea lions in Southern California are also being found malnourished, but in smaller numbers.

"We don't see strong signs yet of a developing El Niño in coastal waters of central California. We see the culmination of a cold and productive seasonal upwelling. But we wouldn't necessarily see those (El Niño) signs this early," said John Field, fisheries biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz.

But, surprisingly early for this time of year and a possible sign of a brewing El Niño, a fisherman reported seeing the jumbo squid, a South American species that follows a warm current, up in Washington state. #

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/19/MNV81886FR.DTL

 

 

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