The Oakland police have picked up a lot of people and a lot of perps, but this might be the first sea lion they've had to take into custody:
A sea lion was picked up by Oakland police Monday morning after it
wandered onto northbound Interstate Highway 880, a California Highway
Patrol officer said.
The sea lion was spotted around 5:45 a.m. as it walked south in the
center divide of northbound I-880, just south of Park Street, the CHP
reported.
CHP Officer Sam Morgan said Oakland police handled the incident.
Luckily, the baby sea lion made it back safely to its native waters. But not without a good scare, look at that poor thing cowering under the bumper of a police cruiser:
Poor little buddy.
According to SF Gate, (s)he was not easily wrangled, and played "hide-and-seek" for a good while with authorities. He or she, they are not sure, is bright and alert, but slightly malnourished. A seal lion who was found on the highway in Richmond just a month ago died from lack of food and water.
But it might not be the highway trek that caused these sea lions to be malnourished, because there is an epidemic of lack of food for these creatures right now along the California coast. What do sea lions eat? According to Wikipedia, this is a bit about their diet:
California sea lions feed on a wide variety of seafood, mainly squid
and fish; sometimes even clams. Commonly eaten fish and squid species
include salmon, hake, Pacific whiting, anchovies, herring, schooling fish, rock fish, lamprey, dog fish, and market squid. They feed mostly around the edge of the continental shelf
as well as sea mounts, the open ocean and the ocean bottom. Average
annual food consumption of males in zoos increases with age to
stabilize at approximately 4,000 kg (8,818 lbs)/year by the age of 10
years. Females showed a rapid increase in average annual food
consumption until they were 3 years old. Thereafter, females housed
outdoors averaged 1,800 kg (3,968 lbs)/year.
California sea lions may eat alone or in small to large groups
depending on the amount of food available. They will cooperate with dolphins, sharks,
and seabirds when hunting large schools of fish. Sea lions from the
state of Washington will wait at the mouths of rivers for the salmon
run. They also have learned to feed on steelhead and white sturgeon below fish ladders at Bonneville Dam and at other locations in the Columbia River, Willamette River, and in Puget Sound.
I don't know about you, but I want to see a sea lion, a dolphin, asea bird and a couple of sharks and hunting in concert. That would be rad.
