In an average year, The Marine Mammal Center of Sausalito, California takes in around 800 sick or injured animals. This past year, due in part to decreased food availability caused by global warming, they took in more than twice that number. Suffering from malnutrition, sometimes pneumonia or bacterial infections, the animals are fed and treated at the center's facilities, which include its headquarters in the Marin Headlands as well as field operations in Mendocino, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo Counties. The survival rate for the animals they take in - some of whom are victims of boat strikes, trash entanglement, and even gunshot wounds - is around 50%. If it feels unbearable to dwell on the ways in which these creatures are harmed and even destroyed by human actions, don't despair. The 45 staff members and over 1,000 volunteers of the forty-year-old Marine Mammal Center provide an antidote to that hopelessness, offering us a clear example of how an organized, well-meaning group of individuals can make the most fundamental difference: the difference between life and death.And that is something to be celebrated. This past Saturday, June 25th, 2016, I was lucky enough to be present for such a celebration, as several of these animals were restored to their birthright of freedom, released into the water at Drake's Beach, about sixty miles north of San Francisco. A few facts:
Now, on to the party... The mid-morning sun burns in a clear blue sky as the vigorous wind scrapes away a layer of sand. A hundred or so spectators gather. Anticipation builds. In pairs, arms stretched downward by the weight of their precious charges, the volunteers carry the animals down in crates and place them on the sand.
Last one in...!
One of the crates is labeled "Sea Rider" and "Wun Wun." Wun Wun is a male California sea lion pup who was rescued April 30th from Sunset State Beach in Santa Cruz County. Sea Rider is a female California sea lion pup. She was rescued on May 23 in Monterey County. Both were successfully treated for pneumonia and malnutrition. The midday sun reclaims Drake's Beach for its own. We have been allowed, as those who stand at the shore have been for millennia, to eavesdrop on ocean and earth's perennially shifting conversation. But now we wander off. Towards home. Or a hike. Or a Saturday lunch in nearby Point Reyes Station. A momentary loneliness passes over, anonymous and obscure until it abruptly identifies itself as the truest indication of a job well done. Namely, the absence of any trace that the job ever needed doing in the first place. www.marinemammalcenter.org
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