Loud, ornery neighbors

PETER BUFFA

They’re fat, they’re loud and they smell bad.

Jerry Springer’s guests? Nope. Your in-laws? Negative. Red Sox

fans? Not.

We’re talking about sea lions -- those loud, lumbering, seriously

overweight pinnipeds that love nothing better than to loll around and

honk a lot.

It seems a gaggle of them have found a spot to loll and honk in

Newport Harbor they really like, and some nearby residents are not

happy about it.

Here is the story as well as I understand it, which is not very

well. There is a strange-looking barge in Newport Harbor that is

about 25 feet on a side and looks like a floating cage. The barge is

used by two groups -- the Pacific Fisheries Enhancement Foundation

and the Balboa Angling Club -- to raise white sea bass. Being

aquatically illiterate, I’m not sure what that means, and raising

fish in partnership with an angling club sounds a little

counterproductive to me, but these are not matters with which I am

conversant.

The barge has been there since 1992 under the stewardship of the

Pacific Fisheries Enhancement Foundation, who must be very good

enhancers because they released 6,000 tagged sea bass from the barge

last year -- each of them a well-bred, well-mannered little fish with

a strong body, a sound mind and good values.

Things were going well, more or less, until the sea lions showed

up. They decided they liked the barge, a lot, and large numbers of

them have been hanging out there.

The problem is, unlike white sea bass, sea lions’ party manners

are not good, and the people who live nearby wish they would go away.

They have nothing against the sea lions and they wish them well. They

just don’t wish them in their backyard.

There is a reason sea lions rarely get invited anywhere, given the

almost nonstop groaning, honking and lying around being, well, fat.

Being called fat might hurt your feelings, but it makes a sea lion

very proud.

The next time you stress about your weight, chew on this:

California sea lions weigh in at about 250 pounds for the girls and

750 pounds for the boys. Their larger, more northern cousins, the

Steller sea lions, tip the scales at 750 pounds for the ladies and

1,500 pounds for the laddies, with the largest weighing in at a ton

or more.

That is why when sea lions dream, they dream of only two things.

One is lying around, and the other is lying around in the sun.

Fortunately -- or not, depending on whether you’re a pinniped or a

homo sapiens living next door -- the barge in Newport Harbor is the

perfect place to do both.

The Pacific Fisheries Enhancement Foundation and the Balboa

Angling Club have done everything they can to discourage the sea

lions from hanging out on the barge, but that old adage is true:

Where does a thousand-pound sea lion sleep? Wherever he wants. And if

there happens to be another thousand-pound hunk o’ sea lion love in

that very spot, you don’t want to be in the same county, let alone in

the house next door.

In fact, it is in one of those houses that you can find Dan

Gilliland, who says he has seen as many as 16 sea lions pushing and

shoving and fighting and generally behaving badly on the barge at the

same time. Sixteen sea lions are a lot -- especially when eight of

them have their eye on the same, sun-warmed spot, which raises the

definition of “honking” to a whole new level.

“[They] get into arguing with each other over who gets to come

aboard and who gets to sleep where,” Gilliland told the Daily Pilot.

For a while, it was a few sea lions lounging on the edges of the

barge. But in the last month or so, some brighter sea lions showed up

and figured out how to work their way inside the fence. Now, it’s a

nonstop sea lion rager.

“The noise is intolerable,” said Gilliland, who signed a petition

along with 39 of his neighbors and delivered it to the city’s Harbor

Resources Division, asking that the barge be removed or relocated.

The city likes sea lions as much as the next municipality, but

they have notified Alex Samios, who heads both the Pacific Fisheries

Enhancement Foundation and the Balboa Angling Club, that they need to

make their cage sea lion proof. Samios said they are trying, but

“they have gotten very smart and very big,” referring, we assume, to

the sea lions.

“It’s a good program,” Samios said. “Just because a couple of

homeowners don’t like the view doesn’t mean we have to wipe out a

program that’s been in place for 13 years.”

Hmm. Apparently, Alex hasn’t had a lot of experience with

homeowners and city councils. The Harbor Resources Division is giving

the groups one more chance to secure their barge against uninvited,

overweight guests.

If I were the one that had to tell the sea lions they had to hit

the road, or the water, I would speak very softly. Not only are they

getting very smart and very big, sea lions are getting very cranky.

In recent weeks, a number of them have lumbered onto Southern

California beaches and, in a few cases, given beachgoers a run for

their money. On June 10, a surfer in Manhattan Beach got a little too

close to a sea lion that had come ashore and the big salty boy

expressed his displeasure by sinking his teeth into the surfer’s

thigh. Marine biologists think the dazed and confused sea lions are

suffering the effects of an unusually intense red tide algae bloom.

Where it will end I do not know. But long after we and the barge

and the homes nearby are gone, the sea lions will be here, looking

for a warm spot where they can park and honk. It’s their job, and

they do it well.

In the meantime, if you run into a sea lion on the beach, stay

away from it. They are very cranky, and they will eat your stuff.

Honk. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].