Ladies, we’ve all done it – bought that lipstick just to treat ourselves and because it’s been a really bad day. Now, imagine that purchase and others, repeated over a decade, creating one perfect day for yourself, and simultaneously contributing to rescuing marine mammals.
It can happen when a business combines its commitment to conservation with an ecologically conscious consumer loyalty program. But it requires both an adherence to eco-based consumerism and a willingness by both buyer and seller to re-interpret the concept of “reward.”
Our story begins with a brand: Aveda. It’s one of those “clean beauty” brands that extracts skin and hair-care products from plants in an ecologically conscious way. For years, I’d stock up on my birthday to net “double points,” but never otherwise took advantage of the rewards I’d accumulated.
This year, I decided to celebrate my birthday by taking Aveda up on a premium reward: a personal, behind-the-scenes tour of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna, California, plus enough food to feed a rescued sea lion for a month, and other needed supplies. That’s a lot of fish.
It’s good fish too – human-quality herring – and at about a buck a fish, a sea lion can eat 15 pounds of it a day, says volunteer Deborah Cohen. Most of the animals eat 8% to 10% of their body weight per day!
Sea lions, harbor seals and elephant seals are PMMC’s primary patients. They typically are rescued in a state of malnutrition, exhaustion (e.g. from becoming tangled in derelict fishing gear), dehydration, or with bites from shark attacks and – incomprehensibly, given that seals are a protected species – even bullet wounds.
The rescue sadly is celebrating its 50th year in operation this year with tributes to both of its co-founders. John Cunningham, a lifeguard and educator who maintained an ongoing relationship with the center died in August, but left a rich legacy of conservation education. Sadly, just as we went to press, his co-founder Jim Stauffer also died. It was his rescue of a sea lion in 1971 while he was working as a lifeguard that led to the founding of Friends of the Sea Lion, which became PMMC.
As all volunteers tell the story, all it took was a little girl asking Jim, “Excuse me, sir, don’t you save lives?” She led him to a young harbor seal, later found to be suffering from lungworms. He nursed the seal back to health and released it to the ocean, but news of the healing spread, and a lifelong mission took root.
PMMC is now part of a network of six coastal rescue, rehab and education centers on the California coast, but in the early ‘70’s it was just John, Jim and Dr. Rose Ekeberg of Laguna Canyon Animal Hospital. They found a permanent home for the center in a former horse barn along the Laguna Canyon Road in 1976. It is home to several outdoor pools and an indoor surgical and treatment center, but plans a much needed, multi-million-dollar expansion.
As for why the center needs to expand, even following the enactment of laws designed to protect coastal waters, one need only look to the October oil spill off the coast of nearby Newport Beach. While the immediate loss to marine mammals was minimal, the center responded to an emergency call to mobilize, and braces for the long-term consequences.
Following the spill, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife declared a fishery closure roughly 35 miles along the coast and out to six miles offshore. It’s hard to predict the ongoing impact on food for marine mammals who hug the Pacific coast, but a larger spill eight years ago likely caused a multi-year spike in PMMC’s sea lion patient population.
Between 2013 and 2016 the center’s sea lion nursery spiked to between 140 and 167 in-house patients at one time, and many others died of malnutrition. Unlike the mothers, seal pups don’t venture far from their birthplace for the first year, and without a ready supply of fish, a similar emergency could recur, worries JoAnn Smith, the center’s unpaid volunteer coordinator.
Happily, when we visited in September, there were just six patients:
· Sea lion pup Gouda, found in Newport Harbor in May, snarled in fishing line and hooks and suffering from dehydration, and a sea lion yearling, Haggis, found in late June at Balboa Pier on Newport Beach suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and a fish hook in her esophagus.
· Flower, a female weaner elephant seal found in late May on Newport Beach suffering from malnutrition and dehydration, and Gator, a male elephant seal weaner found late June in the Strands at Dana Point with malnutrition, dehydration and cookie cutter shark bites.
· Ace, a male elephant seal weaner male, who was underweight, possibly due to his more serious condition of kyphosis or a curved spine; and Nyjah, a male elephant seal weaner male found in late July in Crystal Cove, Newport Beach, suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, and a barb in his muzzle. Haggis had been set for release in October, but this was delayed in the wake of the Newport Beach oil spill.
JoAnn explained in awe that elephant seals can hold their breath for more than an hour, sometimes diving up to a mile deep into the ocean in search of food, sleeping during their decent and return to the surface. Privately, I wondered whether that meant they started with an unusually large heart to be able to withstand the pressure.
JoAnn told me that awhile back she was a high-powered executive at a California tech company. As she puts it, she was driving a convertible Jaguar and wearing designer clothes, when a series of deaths in the family and the sale of her company led to a six-month sabbatical, during which time she volunteered at PMMC.
Despite receiving a high-paying job offer to return, she chose to stay with the seals, who became her passion. She took stock of her investments, adopted a simpler lifestyle, and became a permanent volunteer. That was 22 years ago.
“I loved it here at the center and took on the role of volunteer lead, running shifts two days a week for Michele Hunger, the Director of Animal Care.” JoAnn adds, “I never wanted to be paid for this because I never wanted it to be a job. It was something I wanted to do to give back. I think the seals gave more to me over the years than anything else could have,” she says; “Every day is a gift.”
See pacificmmc.org for more information, and read our sister publication’s account of how a yacht named Aurora aids in sea-life rescue and rehabilitation efforts here: https://bit.ly/AuroraSaves.