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City wants to use dog sounds to disperse La Jolla seals


By Wire Services, SDNN

Saturday, May 23, 2009 9 comments  |  read comments  |  post a comment

Release the hounds. From 6 a.m. until sundown, the city of San Diego will start unleashing some recorded canines on the roughly 200 harbor seals that have taken over Children’s Pool beach in La Jolla in the hope the barking will run off the normally loved marine mammals. But a judge will have to hash out certain issues surrounding the plan on Wednesday before city officials can commence with their sonic plan of attack.

“The idea is rather appalling,” Lelia Kelly, who lives in the Casa de Manana retirement community near the beach, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “I think that would be a true interference to the peace and beauty at the oceanside home where I live and would be an unnatural distraction. I don’t like the idea at all.”

Harbor seals, which must get out of the water at times to regulate their body heat, started taking over the beach in the late 1990s. By 1997, diving in the area was banned due to coliform bacteria linked to the seals. The pupping season just ended May 15, giving city officials the go-ahead to begin their campaign. If the recorded dog barking is a nonstarter, the city would start spraying the seals with water to get them to clear out, the Union-Tribune reported. The city has pegged the annual cost at $688,934.

“The dispersal of seals is almost certain to become a national media event, drawing to San Diego crowds of sightseers, news helicopters and animal rights advocates who may arrive by land or sea to protest the seal dispersal,” according to the city’s proposal.

Spraying water could work, Tina Fahy, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Long Beach, told the Union-Tribune. She was less certain about the dog noises. “If it’s constant barking sounds, they start to just adjust to it. I don’t think that is going to work,” she said. “These animals habituate very easily. . . . I see it as being more of an annoyance to humans in the area.”

About four years ago, a Superior Court judge ordered San Diego to reduce bacterial contamination at Children’s Pool so it could become a swimming area again — as it was designated by state law in 1931. In February, the San Diego City Council asked the state Legislature to pass legislation allowing it to decide on whether the seals stay or go. Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, sponsored a bill that has passed the Senate and is awaiting final action in the Assembly.

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Comment by: Keith Taylor Posted: May 23, 2009, 11:55 am

Why dogs barking? Folks will soon get used to them. Just erect huge loudspeakers playing KOGO. The seals can’t possibly get used to the twin bombasts of Limbaugh an Hedgecock.

Comment by: Abhi Buch Posted: May 23, 2009, 4:41 pm

There are miles and miles of San Diego coastline where families can take their children to enjoy the surf and wade in the water. the La Jolla Seal presence is a delight to all children who visit it: it is the adults and the politicians who have a problem. let the kids enjoy a natural encounter with the ocean’s wild cretures. You got a problem with that? Has any one asked the kids there?

Comment by: Too Funny Posted: May 23, 2009, 11:23 pm

This is funny.
Yah just have to laugh at this.
I guess some guy got paid a lot for this bright idea. Tax payer money well spent.

Why don’t they just let people shoot the seals?
That would keep them away.
Oh, I know. Not in our backyard, right. I forget that part.

Comment by: Sunny Smith Posted: May 24, 2009, 12:48 am

Barking dogs? This is so ridiculous! Leave the seals alone. They were there before we were. Do you really think this would be an issue if it was taking place outside of La Jolla? I doubt it! There are plenty of other areas that are much safer for little ones to play and swim…that water at the children’s pool is pretty rough. Plus, when the pool was designated for kids, there were few active environmental laws and many habitats were destroyed by the dredging being done. How many species do we have to run off or eliminate before we can really appreciate their value?

Comment by: Steve Bickel Posted: May 24, 2009, 7:58 am

They should wait and see how the State Assembly votes.

Comment by: Lamar Posted: May 24, 2009, 3:39 pm

$688,934. are we as citizens really this stupid?

Comment by: Jason Riggs Posted: May 26, 2009, 11:41 am

Wow, next time the City is looking for budget cuts, why not start with the $688K they are spending on this debacle.

Does it really make any sense that people are being laid off all over the place, and yet we are willing to spend over half a million dollars to make a few La Jolla elitists happy?

They refer to the seals as creating a “Poor Man’s Sea World” but I say, so what? I’ve grown up and surfed all up and down the San Diego coastline my whole life and when the seals took that place over in the 90s, I thought that was a remarkable treat for me and my future kids at the time.

But again, even though children can go to La Jolla shores or any number of swimable beaches in San Diego County, some losers hiding behind the letter of the law, have somehow found a way to hose the taxpayers for something that very few of us want anyway.

When will common sense ever prevail again?

Comment by: San Diegans angry over Children’s Pool seals issue Posted: June 15, 2009, 11:05 am

[...] City wants to use dog sounds to disperse the La Jolla seals [...]

Comment by: cat Posted: June 17, 2009, 12:19 am

This is outrageous. Leave the seals alone. This is their habitat as much as ours. They are beautiful creatures and our children can learn much more from watching them and appreciating them than from indulging their selfish desires to be at a beach.

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