During the last week of November ’09, San Francisco’s famous sea lions mysteriously disappeared. These large blubbery animals have been mooching off San Francisco for about 20 years. Its not like the free ride was over, scores of people still came to see them daily, food was plentiful and the weather is far from extreme in the bay.

From Wired:

“We have no idea where they moved on to or why,” said Shelbi Stoudt, who manages a team that helps stranded animals in the San Francisco Bay from the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California.

The sea lions’ disappearance is as strange as their initial colonization of the pier about 20 years ago, in late 1989. They just started showing up one day and as their numbers increased, their traditional hang out, Seal Rocks, became less populated. There are all sorts of theories about why the pier became a favorite haul-out spot for the sea lions, but no one knows for sure why the animals’ behavior changed.

Fast forward a few weeks and it looks like Ashley Harrell from SF Weekly found the missing puzzle piece. Who knew sea lions were such scaredy-cats?

Not the sea lion chasing dog, but terrifying all the same.

From SFWeekly:

“He runs in their direction, barking,” says itinerant fisherman Daniel K. of his dog, a golden retriever–pit bull mix called Rez. “He’s a lot faster than they are on land. That’s what gets ‘em.”

When Daniel K. showed up at the Hyde Street Pier for crab season in early November, he found it covered in sea lions. Although he had heard about the problems with pinniped infestations up and down the West Coast, “San Francisco is the worst I’ve seen,” he says. He never imagined his dog might be a solution. When he got Rez a year ago, the dog was unfazed by sea lions. But on a recent fishing trip, Rez developed an aversion after several aggressive sea lions charged the boat: “It freaked him out. After that, he would bark at them.”

How Hyde Street Pier eliminated its sea lion problem
Famous San Francisco Sea Lions Abandon Their Pier 39 Post
Image of Pier 39 courtesy Gary Soup
Image of Dog Courtesy of Flickr

animals, dogs, Pier 39, San Francisco, Sea Lions, Strange