SAN MIGUEL ISLAND — On a cool, foggy day, a tiny California sea lion waddles painfully to a rock to die.
Shivering, the 6-month-old pup stretches her neck toward the sky, gathering some warmth from the weak rays of the sun. Around her, other scrawny, malnourished sea lions are sucking the last bits of milk from their mothers. On either side of her lie two decaying sea lion carcasses.
"That pup's outta there," said Bob DeLong, one of the nation's leading experts in marine biology, watching from a sand dune on San Miguel Island. "She's lucky if she makes it 24 hours."
The 10-pound pup, whose wrinkled skin is too big for her body, is one of an abnormally high number of sea mammals--about 6,000 since the summer--dying on the island 50 miles off the Ventura coast.
Though this pristine, desolate place normally provides an abundance of nutrient-rich plant and animal life--drawing the largest population of seals and sea lions south of Alaska--the island tells a different story this year.
In one of the most tangible manifestations of El Nino, oceanic warming has driven away the creatures' favorite foods: squid, anchovies, herring and sardines.
Up and down the California coast, the food shortage is taking its toll on northern fur seals and California sea lions, both of which breed in summer and compete for the same food supply.
Three out of four fur seals born on San Miguel this June already have died, and DeLong expects to see the same fatality rate among the sea lion population by summer.
DeLong, who works for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle, has been stacking up the bodies here since midsummer. The death toll, he said, is no doubt similar on the half-dozen islands from San Francisco to San Diego where pinnipeds breed.
His job on San Miguel is to document the famine, not to save the dying animals. San Miguel has been targeted because the island has the California coast's largest seal and sea lion population and studies have been done here since the 1960s.
What's happening now, DeLong noted, is natural selection.
"Am I sad about it?" DeLong asked. "No. I'm just a watcher by the pond. It's a privilege to be here to watch the good years and the bad years."
But not everybody is willing to let the animals wither away.
Rescue groups--from Sea World in San Diego to a Sausalito-based organization--are poised along the coast to take in the starving seals and sea lions.
