Walking along the Richmond shore, something shiny caught my eye. Left behind by high tide, stranded on the rocks, was a tiny silver body. The pup was on his back, his eyes closed, his flippers extended along his sides. He was about the size of a human 1-year-old. He looked too flat, not plump and round as he should have been, as if all the air had left him. He held only absence; he was dead. “Is it a seal or a sea lion?” I asked my husband the biologist. “A sea lion,” he said. “See the little ear flap?”
At home, I phoned the Marine Mammal Rescue Center. “Yes,” the woman said. “Someone from the Academy of Sciences will come to get the body. There’s a die-off of sea lion pups happening, but we don’t know why yet.”
A die-off. In yoga class, the phrase came to my mind. Die-off. At the end of class, when I lay in Shavasana, flat on my back, arms and legs relaxed, with my eyes closed, I saw his silvery limp little self, in corpse pose, too.
Over the next days, bits of sea lion bad news emerged in the press. The number of dead and dying pups found around the Bay was nearing 1,000. They were all about 7 months old, still nursing, almost old enough to wean. Instead of 30 pounds, the pups weighed 15.
Two weeks later, we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where we asked a young marine biologist with a ponytail what was happening. “The ocean is too warm,” she said flatly. “Humans are releasing too much carbon. Some goes into the atmosphere, but most of it into the oceans, and it’s warming them. Also,” she continued, “this is the second year that the normal upwelling of nutrient-rich cold water failed along the coast. There might be something else going on, but we think there simply isn’t enough for the sea lions to eat.”
When the aquarium closed, my husband and I went on a short hike around Point Lobos, the late sun slanting through the pines, the narrow path leading to surf-battered rocky points. Standing on a west-facing bluff, we looked down onto a small beach below us. We both gasped as we saw that it was covered with beige and brown sea lions—adults—all lying perfectly still in rows, as if they had just pulled themselves, exhausted, onto the sand.
A uniformed park ranger came up and stood beside us. Beneath her flat-brimmed hat I could see wisps of reddish curly hair, and the profile of her worried face. “They arrived today,” she said. “These are nearly all females—mothers—and we’ve found several that have miscarried their fetuses. They’re supposed to be on the Channel Islands now, with their pups from last summer. Those pups are gone—probably dead—and the pups they’re losing now were going to be born in June or July. These mothers are starving. They’ve swum 300 miles looking for something to eat, but there’s nothing here, either.” Her voice was deeply sad, and she didn’t look at us, her gaze fixed on the sea lions below. Then she bravely said, “I’m trying to think positively. Maybe they’re establishing a new place to give birth? A new rookery?” She didn’t sound convinced.
A young couple came up with their cameras. They both had on new hiking clothes and boots, and they stood clasping hands, close together like honeymooners.
“Awesome!” the man exclaimed, seeing the sea lions. He made several photos, smiling, not noticing that the animals were barely moving and made no sound. Somehow, without looking at each other, we three silently agreed to just smile weakly at them, and not to tell them they were witnesses to a disaster. They walked on. Not another word was spoken.
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Melody Ermachild Chavis is a retired criminal defense investigator for death penalty cases. She is an essayist and the author of two books, Altars in the Street and Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan. She lives in Richmond.