Emaciated Pup Calls Attention to Sea Lions’ Plight : Nature: The beached, starving mammal is one of many found in recent months. Officials say there isn’t much they can do, because food has dwindled.

Patrick Edquist, 10, spent most of Thursday perched atop a rocky seawall, a look of concern furrowing his young face.

“I hope they come and take her away,” he said. “I hope she doesn’t just die here.”

Patrick was focused on an emaciated young sea lion, the latest of many that have beached themselves along the Ventura County coast in a weakened state of malnutrition.

For the past few months, more than 20 ailing sea lions and scores of dead ones have been found along the Ventura County coastline, said Shannon Morago, a ranger at Emma Wood State Beach.

Patrick and a small crowd gathered early Thursday morning at Emma Wood to watch the discomforting spectacle of a struggling pup warding off people and a curious dog but too tired to swim to safety.

The unseasonably warm El Nino currents have forced smaller fish into colder waters, robbing the sea lions of their principal source of food, Morago said. Pelicans and cormorants have been hit as well, she added.

Animal control officers could take the stranded sea lions to marine mammal care centers, but only two have been taken so far this summer, Morago said.

Earlier in the day, a Ventura County Animal Control officer responded to a call from Larry Edquist, Patrick’s father, about a stranded sea lion. But, Edquist said, “all he did was push her back into the water.”

The sea lion beached itself again minutes after the officer left.

Animal control officers are not required to collect sick or injured sea mammals, and only the worst cases are transported to care facilities, said Mia Frost, operations manager of the Ventura County Department of Animal Regulation.

“As we get more calls on it, we will respond again,” Frost said.

“We’ll let it hang out for the night and check back on it tomorrow,” said Sam Garvin, the officer who responded to the initial call. “Chances are at sundown it’ll go out hunting for food.”

But Morago, like other observers of stranded pups, squirm at the way that Mother Nature thins the area’s burgeoning sea lion herd. She admits that in the past she has spent her own lunch money to buy starving sea lions a pound of squid.

“Sometimes a baby like this one will come in to rest for a while, then go out again,” Morago said. “But this one is starving to death.”

Morago motioned across the surf to another, larger sea lion bobbing near the beached animal. “That’s her mother,” she said.

Ventura County has no place to rehabilitate injured or malnourished sea mammals. The Organization for Respect and Care of Animals in the Sea (ORCAS), a nonprofit group in Rancho Palos Verdes, has a marine mammal facility. But the group does not actually retrieve beached animals, an ORCAS spokeswoman said.

“Local animal control has to bring the animal to us,” she said.

Members of the public should not touch a stranded animal, she said, adding that it is both dangerous and against the law. Sea lions have sharp teeth and will bite if they believe that they are being attacked.

In June, Ventura animal control officers brought a stranded sea lion to ORCAS. The sick animal was transferred to San Diego’s Sea World park, which has a large rehabilitation facility, the spokeswoman said.

There are more than 300 injured sea mammals at the Sea World facility, said Corrine Brindley, spokeswoman for Sea World.

“That’s near record levels,” she said.

But like ORCAS, Sea World could not retrieve the young pup stranded Thursday at Emma Wood State Beach. “We’ll take her if someone brings her in,” Brindley said. “We never turn away an animal.”

Since 1972, sea lions and other marine mammals have enjoyed protection under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. That has resulted in dramatic population increases, said Brian Jenison, president of the Ventura County Commercial Fisherman’s Assn.

With more animals competing for fewer fish, weaker sea lions will inevitably die of starvation. “If we rehabilitate every animal that beaches themselves, we really aren’t doing them any justice,” he said. “It is difficult sometimes to watch nature take its course.”

Patrick Edquist is learning that. A ranger has warned him against trying to feed the sea lion. And even though he is on vacation with his family, he has vowed to watch over the ailing pup until he returns to Downey today.

“I guess I’ll stay here till dark,” he said. “She’s real weak now, but I think she will be OK.”