If all goes to plan, Redondo Beach’s King Harbor will no longer seem like a “sea lion rookery,” as Redondo Beach Mayor Steve Aspel has joked, following the construction of a marine mammal barge in the harbor’s main channel.
The Redondo Beach City Council voted to approve the barge at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, following presentations by both the Waterfront and Economic Development Department and students from the Marine Biology class at Rancho Palos Verdes’ Chadwick School.
Budgeted to cost $52,723, the 21-by-32 foot mammal barge is designed to support approximately 116 sea lions, or 25,593 pounds of marine mammal weight. The structure is also designed to carry a solar-powered navigational light to alert boaters within the channel, though as Redondo Beach Fire Chief and Harbor Master Robert Metzger said, the platform will be located well outside of the channel’s high traffic area.
District 3 Councilman Pat Aust took issue with the barge’s size, questioning whether or not the 672 square feet of the platform’s surface would be enough to carry the sea lions, comparing its area to that of docks pictured in a presentation to the council.
“Back in the early 2000s, that [dock] was totally inundated — you couldn’t even see the deck, and it was submerged because they were piled up on it,” Aust said. “If we are going to build something, it has to be big enough to handle what’ll happen in just the first month or two,” he said.
Metzger admitted that the size “is a shot in the dark,” but that the city didn’t want to build something too large and would be, therefore, less effective than desired. “The modest dimensions of this are intended to address the majority of sea lion problems.”
The barge is designed to take the place of a bait barge that sank in 2013 after nearly 30 years of giving the harbor’s sea lions a place to place to haul out, socialize and rest — necessary activities for happy, healthy sea lions, the Chadwick students said, also noting that the sea lion population has been in decline.
“Since the sea lions have no haul out, there have been negative encounters and harassment,” student Megan Goodman said, referring to a recent story in which a sea lion pup was wrapped in towels and taken by a group of people, essentially “kidnapped.”
“That wouldn’t have happened if they were on a barge surrounded by water,” she said. “Right now, they need that dock.”
Boat owner Kelly Wilhelm agreed.
“As cute as sea lions are from a distance, they’re not cute when they’re out on the docks,” she said. “It’s so out of control, and this is about public safety…years ago, we didn’t have this issue, we didn’t have lions on the docks. Now, if you step off of a boat, a sea lion may bite you.”
Redondo Beach Marina General Manager Leslie Page confirmed that people have, indeed been bitten by the sea lions — and that, in fact, two people had been bitten that very morning.
“Those pups are so cute, but so dangerous, Page said. “They have the bite of a pit bull, and they carry diseases. They’re scary, and when they’re big they’re really scary,” she said, noting that the lions have gotten so prevalent that they’ve been spotted in the Marina parking lot and approaching buildings.
District 1 Councilman Jeff Ginsburg asked Metzger if it would be possible for the city to use the breakwater wall as a makeshift barge for the lions to congregate.
“I asked that, myself, to those far smarter than myself of sea lions,” Metzger said. “I was told that a number of pups hang out there at times — and that’s where we often find many of our sick and deceased sea lions. The edges of the rocks are sharp, the tides move, and given the preference sea lions would prefer to not move across sharp rocks.”
Ginsburg kept on the idea, asking if it would be possible to pour concrete in order to smooth out the edges of the rocks — and while he did, denizens of the harbor began to murmur dissent, with some calling out that his idea simply wouldn’t work.
“These are the people I’m talking about that are smarter than I am,” Metzger said.
The measure passed unanimously. The barge’s construction and installation is scheduled to be completed by late summer 2015.
