Effort to Aid Injured Seal Wins Converts in Avalon

Residents of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island thought that the young elephant seal that washed onto the beach might have been shot, but no one knew what to do.

That was on Sunday. Late that evening, a woman who lives near the harbor couldn’t stand the animal’s suffering any longer. Carmen Langford had heard of a volunteer group called Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, which cares for sick or wounded sea mammals, mostly from Orange County beaches. She got on the telephone.

“We couldn’t get a boat that night,” Karin Wyman, curator for Friends of the Sea Lion, said Friday, “but next morning, Monday, I got two of our volunteers, Darren Ramsey and Kris Alvarez, and we went to Long Beach and got aboard the Catalina Express ferry.

“It was the longest trip we’ve ever made for a sick animal, and we were loaded down with stuff--a blender for mixing food, some herring, feeding tubes, antibiotics, just about every medicine we have here.”

They also brought a cage to bring the sea lion back to their shelter in Laguna Beach.

To Wyman’s surprise, when they got off the boat, she found that island residents “seemed to resent us being there. They were very negative, telling us the animal had a contagious disease and to just stay away. They just weren’t friendly at all.”

But Wyman and her volunteers went about caring for the elephant seal.

“First, we found he hadn’t been shot,” she said, “but he was terribly emaciated. We later learned he was about the sickest animal we’ve ever seen, with hookworms, round worms, pneumonia, dehydration, and even some stingray barbs in his mouth.”

Lack of Cooperation

Despite the lack of cooperation from the natives, the rescuers found a place to plug in the blender. They got warm, fresh water from a coffee shop, cleaned the herring and blended it with the water and force-fed the animal through a tube.

“As the day went on,” Wyman said, “it seemed that everybody in the whole town got interested in what we were doing. Some sheriff’s deputies showed up, and some people from the Catalina Conservancy and some city officials.

“And all of a sudden, everybody got real friendly.”

So friendly, in fact, that Avalon Mayor George Scott said Friday in a telephone interview, “I think the whole town would appreciate it if the Friends of the Sea Lion could come over here and discuss helping us set up a similar operation.”

Ailing Ocean Animals

He said that Avalon “is such a small town, with limited resources,” that nothing much can be done for sick and injured ocean animals that show up there.

“We certainly would be interested in having something like this (a trained group of volunteers) because, as things are now, people get the idea we just don’t care,” Scott said.

Wyman and Bill Ford, administrative officer of the Laguna Beach shelter, said they would be delighted to help.

And, as of late Friday, the young elephant seal, which Wyman named Avalon (Lonnie for short), appeared to be gaining in its struggle to live.

“When he’s well enough, we’ll take him back to Catalina,” Wyman said.