Sea lion commandeers OC fire boat

Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol officers, who took a sea lion for a ride to Newport Bay and away from the public, gave up after it commandeered their fire boat, forcing them to return to land and use a garden hose to shoo it out to sea.

The sea lion came to the attention of the Harbor Patrol officers last Wednesday when it latched onto a child’s pant leg on the Fernando Street public pier and showed no signs of heading back into the bay, according to a posting on the sheriff’s department blog.

The juvenile sea lion stood its ground. While it jumped into the water briefly, it quickly returned to the dock.

“We attempted to call a couple of agencies that normally handle sea lion calls, but they weren’t available — which left it up to us to handle,” Deputy Jim Slikker said.

The deputies tried to fashion a leash to pull the sea lion out to a buoy known as a hangout for its species, but after three failed attempts the sea lion was brought aboard.

The sea lion snuck into the V-berth and jumped into the driver seat, using his flippers to turn on lights, sound the horn, and even put the boat in reverse. Deputies tried to persuade the sea lion to leave the throttles.

“He finally moved off the controls and we were able to control the boat again,” Slikker said. “That thing was crawling everywhere. I was impressed with his agility,” Deputy Chris Corn told ABC7. “It was definitely something I will will probably never see again.”

The crew returned and called animal control, using squirts from a garden hose to get it off the boat. About 1 1/2 hours later, with a few more squirts, the sea lion jumped from the dock and headed out to sea — and hasn’t been seen since, the deputies said.

Tags: SDNN

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.