King Neptune, the young adult sea lion we checked in with yesterday, was put down by vets at the Marina Mammal Center last night. The poor fella was suffering from a bad case of pneumonia after an infection in his gunshot wounds spread to his chest, forcing his caretakers to take euthanize the innocent marine mammal. more ›

When last we checked in with Silent Knight, the sea lion left blind by a shotgun blast to the face on a Sausalito beach last December, veterinarians at the Marine Mammal Center were still feeling out possible homes for the poor creature. Today however, the Examiner says the San Francisco Zoo is looking to scoop him up, along with another sightless sea mammal named Henry, in what could be a brilliant PR move for the zoo that was recently making negatively charged headlines again. more ›

An injured Sea Lion was picked up on a Sausalito beach Wednesday night, where he was found with his right eye missing, his left eye swollen shut and shotgun pellets lodged inside his head. Marine Mammal Center Vets treating the poor creature, which they've named Silent Knight because of his "regal bearing", said they see about ten sea lions a year with gunshot injuries and many more likely go unnoticed and untreated. more ›

Veterinarians at the Marine Mammal Center in Vallejo and a plastic surgeon who usually works on people are set to perform the first ever reconstructive surgery on a sea lion that was found shot several times in the face. The sea lion was discovered last fall in the Sacramento River, captured, and taken first to the Center in Sausalito where its wounds were flushed and it was fed and given antibiotics. The now 650-pound animal had gone down to 350 pounds but was still trying to tough it out in the wild. They named him Sgt. Nevis, after the Yolo County police officer who helped with the rescue. more ›

Two baby sea lions, whose mother gave birth to them at Pier 39 and abandoned them there for reasons unknown, have settled into their new home at Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago. They don't have names yet, but they were born in June and subsequently picked up by the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito where they were nursed for a bit and then sent to SIx Flags in Vallejo for a month before making the trip to Chicago. more ›

You can't make this shit up, folks! Two specially trained sea lions and a dolphin succeeded in "identifying" a suspicious device attached to a concrete pier piling as part of a counter-terrorism exercise the other day near AT&T Park. The marine mammal team also successfully spotted two suspicious divers and used a leg cuff to "apprehend one of them." more ›

Sea lions spotted in massive numbers off the Oregon coast, after disappearing off Pier 39 right after Thanksgiving. more ›

We noted last week the recent infestation of sea lions spilling over down at the piers, and this week's SF Weekly has a piece about efforts by Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center to rehabilitate injured and malnourished sea lions -- efforts which are, kinda, aiding the overpopulation. Writer Ashley Harrell points to the fact that sea lions have traditionally been used by environmentalists as "charismatic megafauna," i.e. the kind of cute, endearing animals who can serve as the public face for a preservation cause and rally support via their adorable little faces. more ›

An influx of sea lions at Pier 39 has resulted in the need for more docks. According to SF Examiner, around 1,500 of them "are piled on top of each other on the docks," which is "not only a record-breaking number of the massive creatures at the pier, it’s also three times more than normal." But this spurt isn't just happening in SF. The California coast, it seems, has seen a boom in sea lion growth this year. (Yay!) more ›