Think of them as amphibious sumo wrestlers. A pack of rowdy sea lions has invaded Newport Harbor, sinking a boat, thrashing docks and -- with their cacophony of barking -- turning residents into sleepless zombies.
In a scene that has played out up and down the West Coast, the whiskered creatures are charming tourists but exasperating local officials, who are studying a far-flung set of strategies to thwart the federally protected mammals.
On Wednesday, the Newport Beach Harbor Commission debated the situation, which has taken on added urgency since 18 sea lions piled onto a 37-foot sailboat and sank it over Labor Day weekend.
The sheriff's Harbor Patrol has also been inundated with noise complaints.
"A barking dog doesn't hold a candle to this. It's like 40 barking dogs -- in surround sound," grumbled Balboa Peninsula resident Darci Schriber.
For relief, she and her neighbors contemplated painting a small electric boat to look like an orca, complete with piped-in whale sounds to scare off the sea lions.
Seattle tried a similar plan nine years ago after sea lions raided Puget Sound to devour endangered steelhead trout at a fish ladder. The fiberglass whale, dubbed "Fake Willy," was submerged nearby as an "aquatic scarecrow."
It didn't work. Neither did rubber bullets, firecrackers or underwater speakers blasting high-pitched sounds. At one point, mammal wranglers captured several of the sea lions and deported them to an island near Santa Barbara. The lions were back within a week, said Doyle Hanan, a former California Fish and Game official who is working with federal researchers on gadgets to deter the animals, which tip the scales at 600 to 800 pounds each.
Sea lions have always been known for their ingenious and sometimes ornery antics. But this summer, Newport Beach officials noticed a dramatic influx. Nobody knows why the creatures are muscling into the area, but the U.S. sea lion population has boomed over three decades, since Congress made it a crime to kill them.
Roughly 400,000 sea lions now swim off West Coast shores, and 100,000 to 200,000 more ply the waters of Baja California -- so many that anglers complain that the sea lions gobble up a good part of their catch.
In Newport Harbor, boat owners have barricaded their swim steps with chairs and kayaks. And residents of Balboa Peninsula have resorted to squirt guns and sleeping pills to cope with the noisy animals.
