Hundreds of dead sea lion pups wash ashore on the Central Coast – NBC Bay Area

While people at Pier 39 in San Francisco are enjoying the growing number of sea lions, a different story is playing out on the Central Coast, where large numbers of dead sea lion pups are washing ashore.

Whelping season begins next month, but hundreds of baby sea lions have washed up on a Central Coast island. It seems as if they suffered a miscarriage.

Drone video footage over the island of Ano Nuevo shows the dead sea lion pups. Researchers estimate there are almost 300. In an average year, scientists count about 700 young who are born with just one or two miscarriages.

UC Santa Cruz researchers are examining the carcasses to determine the cause. One possibility is that there simply isn’t enough food for a booming population. The scientists track the sea lions via satellite and find that they travel as far south as Baja California to feed.

“My best guess is that we’re experiencing an El Niño event. That means the food connections are broken,” said Daniel Costa, a researcher at UC Santa Cruz. “There’s less food, there’s less fish in general. My best guess, and it’s a guess, is that food availability has gone down. The marine population in California is extremely high, so it’s already at a point where it’s pretty far off the mark.”

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in sea lion numbers at Pier 39 in San Francisco since the beginning of May. Biologists told NBC Bay Area that this was due to the anchovies. There were more than 1,000 sea lions at the pier, the highest number in 15 years.