Dr. Alissa Deming looked at ultra-sound images of two sea lions on her office computer screen in the red barn the Pacific Marine Mammal Center calls home.
Pointing out a mass of tumors in the animals’ reproductive tracks, she then traced their other organs with her finger, the liver, spleen and kidneys, all covered with cancerous tumors.
“There was cancer throughout their bodies,” Deming said, recalling the sad discovery just two weeks after she became the center’s veterinarian early last year. “They were swimming tumors. It speaks to how tough these wild animals are.”
The two adult sea lions were found struggling on the sand in Huntington Beach. Named Mandy and Charlotte by the rescue center’s staff, they were given the usual battery of tests, including X-rays, blood work and ultrasounds – Deming’s diagnosis: urogenital carcinoma.
Deming has been seeing it in sea lions coming into the Laguna Beach rescue center and at others marine mammal programs she worked at before, and with Dr. Frances Gulland, a marine mammal veterinarian at U.C. Davis, whom she calls her mentor, has been studying why and how the female sea lions are developing cancer – they recently published a research paper.
This year, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center celebrates its 50th anniversary. And, from Deming’s perspective, what she and the center’s staff are doing now studying the effects of contaminants on marine mammals would not be possible without the program’s foundation built by decades of rescuing and rehabilitating pinnipeds, dolphins and sea turtles. With that knowledge, she said, the nonprofit PMMC is now becoming a hub for marine mammal health and research in Southern California.
Since opening in 1971, the Laguna Beach center has rescued more than 10,000 animals – that’s eight to 10 generations of sea lions, seals, elephant seals, sea turtles and more recently dolphins and a Guadelupe fur seal returned to the ocean. And, with only a handful of paid staffers and some 200 volunteers.
Most animals come in after being found stranded on beaches and outcroppings and in harbors along Orange County’s coast, often starving and dehydrated. But there have also been times animals have been found shot, entangled in fishing lines or struck by boats. In 2013, hundreds of sea lions began washing up on California beaches because of toxic blooms and warming waters.
PMMC staff and volunteers also do their best to educate the community and welcome more than 50,000 visitors each year to see the patients in their pools. Tens of thousands of children have gone through its school programs and summer camps, and this summer PMMC is opening up internships to veterinarians.
“None of this work could have been done without the foundation that was laid and was developed 50 years ago,” Deming said. “It’s been the constant support of the community in Laguna Beach and Orange County that is the stepping stone to future research.”
A life to save
In 1971, Jim Stauffer, a Newport Beach lifeguard, John Cunningham, a Laguna Beach lifeguard and high school teacher, and Rose Eckberg, a local veterinarian, teamed up to help sick pinnipeds washing up on Orange County beaches.
The first animal was rescued 50 years ago this month, said Stauffer.
It all started with a simple question: A girl approached him while on duty asking: “You save lives, don’t you?” She told him where to find a harbor seal that seemed in trouble. “There’s a life, save it,” she said.
He scooped up the lethargic animal, putting it into his Jeep, but it jumped out. Later, after his shift ended, he checked for the animal one more time.
“I went back and there it was,” he said. “I put it in my car and wedged the surfboard next to it so it couldn’t get out. Then I drove to my apartment in Costa Mesa.”
Stouffer used a mattress, box springs and two pillows to create a little pen. He added about six inches of water and put in the seal.
Eckberg gave him antibiotics for the animal. Each day, he scooped fish from the end of the Newport Beach pier “to feed the little guy.” Three weeks later, Stauffer released the plump and healthy seal in Laguna Beach.
Soon, Stauffer earned the reputation as the “sea lion guy” with more rescues and was hired in Laguna Beach, where he began working with Cunningham.
“People were coming up to us and wondering what to do,” said Stephanie Cunningham, Cunningham’s wife and among the first volunteers. “Between Sea World and Marine Land in Rancho Palos Verdes, there wasn’t a place to treat sick and injured animals.”
The group called themselves Friends of the Sea Lion and enlisted dozens of volunteers from the community who helped care for the rescued animals.
In 1976, Cunningham and Stauffer relocated the animal operation to its final home, an abandoned red barn along Laguna Canyon Road.
Stauffer later moved to Northern California and it fell to Cunningham to run the group. He became its director in 1976.
To take care of the animals, Cunningham started a marine sciences class at the high school in 1973. As a requirement, students had to put in 30 hours at the center learning hands-on. That meant feeding, medicating, doing diagnostics. They were also responsible for captures and releases. And, they were the ones who built the original pens for the animals on the barn’s ground floor.
“John wanted them to see how important it was to be involved with the holistic treatment of the animals,” Stephanie Cunningham said. “He didn’t want to just teach a subject; he wanted them to see the total picture.”
Marine Mammal Mama
Michele Hunter, with a background working in neo-natal care at Children’s Hospital Orange County, started volunteering with PMMC in 1989 on the Sunday afternoon shift, which meant she cleaned pens, did afternoon feedings and made sure all the patients were where they should be when she closed down at night.
“It was so much different then,” she said. “There were only three pools and we used some kiddie pools. We didn’t have heated floors like now, we had wooden pallets and that’s how we kept the animals up off the ground.”
She started volunteering more days and learning more about animal care on the job.
“I just enjoyed helping; it seemed even back then like a family,” said Hunter, who has been with PMMC for 32 years. “It’s like a living, breathing barn. It feels like home and it’s where I’m supposed to be.”
She was named animal care supervisor in 2000, quitting her corporate job with Taco Bell. She is credited with developing feeding and care routines that have been very successful in rehabilitating the rescues.
“Each animal has its own needs,” said Hunter, now nicknamed Marine Mammal Mama. “I kind of intrinsically know what they need. I always say, ‘You’ve got to go with your gut.’”
Each animal typically stays at PMMC for three months. When they first come in, they are given a blended solution of fish bits, Pedialyte and Nutri-Cal. As they improve, they are taught to hunt and compete for whole fish so they’ll be ready when released – because that is always the goal.
Amid the thousands of rescues, there are some Hunter said she can’t forget. One is Liberty, a yearling that weighed only 19 pounds (typically what a sea lion would weigh at birth) when he was rescued.
“We didn’t have heaters, so we took him upstairs and put him into a pack-and-play and bassinet,” she said. “I still remember the little guy, so frail and weak lying there like a skeleton. The first time he stood up, we were just crying. We made such efforts to make him well and then we released him.”
There were also Pearl and Xander, the first two pups she hand-raised in 2003. Both are now sea lion ambassadors in an Oklahoma City Zoo. Hunter became a “grandmother” when the two had pups. When she went to visit them years later, they still remembered her.
“I was in tears,” she said. “They remembered my voice and smell. It was quite an honor.”
In 2015, the center, which by then had changed its name to Pacific Marine Mammal Center, had a record-high number of rescues – and that was after two previous years of increasing sickness among animals. Domoic acid, a toxic algae bloom, was the culprit.
Animals were everywhere.
“The blenders were going non-stop,” Hunter said. “It was mind-boggling. I can’t believe we did it. Volunteers were just standing there crying with tubes in their hands as the animals were seizing.”
Growth from experience
While PMMC has already made a name for itself rescuing and rehabilitating thousands of marine mammals, it’s now time to move forward, its leaders say.
The center works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to share data and responses to challenging ocean conditions and has become a go-to for the federal agency in helping with whale entanglements.
Justin Greenman, NOAA’s assistant stranding coordinator in California, said he has watched PMMC not only expand its footprint in size and the number of animals its cares for, but also in the quality of the work the center provides.
“Our leadership challenged the (stranding) network from not just saving every animal, but also building up the science and continuing to improve the standards of care and research” he said. “They are rising to the challenge.”
In December, the center got a grant to study why southern killer whales are declining in the Pacific Northwest.
In recent years, dolphins have been washing ashore in higher numbers, but none were making it off the sand alive. This year, PMMC successfully rescued a dolphin, treated it and transported it to SeaWorld San Diego.
Though, the dolphin later died from the illness that caused it to beach itself, Deming notches that as a success.
Then, there is Pudge, an endangered Guadalupe fur seal found in Huntington Beach. The animal is the first successful rescue for PMMC of that species, which, according to NOAA, has been experiencing an unusually high number of die-offs recently.
Pudge remained at the center for 10 days and then transferred to Sea World San Diego. He is expected to be released shortly, Deming said.
“Pudge is going to make it,” she said. “We are so proud of that.”
And that is what PMMC’s 50th anniversary is all about, Stephanie Cunningham said.
“The reward is when those little guys swim out to the ocean,” she said. “It’s just rewarding to see something like this blossom and contribute to the environment. It’s not a local place now, it’s got a presence in California and it’s spreading.”
