Sharing the Beach

I have a good friend whom lives over in Maine, who has a very tolerant view of her local critters, tossing water onto skunks aside. She understands that to have all the great things around her and her kin, she has to put up with some things that are less than pleasant. If I had skunks I think I too would want to repel them as well. It is heartening to find other people that care about the local environment enough to put up with Raccoons and Skunks eating the cat food and the yoghurt.

But this is not the attitude of everyone. In San Diego I heard of a situation that ended up in court, the American way, when Harbour Seals returned to a beach to breed. However the story was being reported as look at what the nasty federal government and city authorities have done and the people had to go to court to get our beach back.

Therefore I did some digging and realised that this was far from as straight forward as it looked. In La Jolla, San Diego California a benefactor donated a strip of beach to the city. This beach had been protected by a harbour wall built by the Scripps family to make a safe secluded swimming beach. And in 1931 Ellen Browning Scripps donated it to the city of San Diego as the children's pool.

I have no doubt that this beach about four hundred yards wide, along with the seventy three miles of other public beach was much enjoyed by the public. Then twenty years ago seals started to return. I say return as just off the shore at this cove is a rock named Seal rock, so from at least 1909 seals were known to be using the beach and rock as a nursery. As maps from that date show this.

So when the seals first started to return, a small number of volunteers arranged a vigil to protect the seals and prevent any harmful interactions between the seals and humans bathing at the beach. As Harbour seals are protected by federal law and the city of San Diego was worried that faeces may cause a health hazard, they were worried about being sued, so the beach was closed to bathers.

Now this was a small section of a large expanse of public beach, but the way that some people reacted, you would think that the city and the federal government had stripped them of all their human rights. To my way of thinking, adults were behaving like spoilt children of five years old who could not share the beach. In fact the childish behaviour of the adults may have been the impetus for some adolescences who tortured and attacked the seals.

This lead to federal officers from the US Fish and Wildlife service being stationed at the beach. As it turned out it was a good job they were there as on 23rd March 2003 a group of swimmers who became known as the “La Jolla Nine” swam on to the seal beach, frightening the seals off the beach, and one of the swimmers got attacked by a male seal who was just trying to protect his harem of females. Female seals can be dangerous, but a male is even worse. He was injured but was lucky to get away with such a stupid action. It is akin to trying to poke a tiger with a stick or pull a lions tail or chase after a moose during the rut. Well the La Jolla nine were charged with disturbing the seals, and found guilty.

Then the people against the seals started causing panic by saying that there were Great White Sharks off the coast and they were eating the seals. It was like a scene from Jaws. While it is true that many species of sharks will eat seals, the shark is a much maligned creature. In fact Peter Benchley regrets having written Jaws as he now realises that his book has increased fear and persecution of sharks.

Well a law suit was brought against the city of San Diego and the seals lost. As Ellen Browning Scripps had gifted the cove, called the Children's Pool to the city in trust. While the verdict may be correct from a very precise legal definition, it really was unfair and unjust. The seals will have been using that beach for thousands of years, long before humans settled there in La Jolla, and what was wrong with sharing? There was other beaches that swimmers and surfers could use.

The irony is that Ellen Browning Scripps was a member of the family that bestowed the funds that supports the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, a place of learning and research that is dedicated to improving the marine environment and was crucial in the work that increased the numbers of seals in the ocean around San Diego. Therefore I doubt that she would have wanted to see the seals cleared out of the cove.