25 July 2023
SAN DIEGO (KSWB) – A sea lion charged tourists on the beach at La Jolla Cove in San Diego Sunday evening.
It happened as summer crowds, mostly tourists, overwhelmed the tiny, protected beach — one of the most iconic in California — trying to get up-close photos with the beautiful sea mammals and newly weaned pups. But it’s a dangerous risk.
“I feel like people should educate themselves a little bit about the marine life here — what to do, what not to do, respect the sea lions, don’t touch them, don’t get in their space,” Japhet Perez Estrada, a La Jolla native and business owner, said to Nexstar’s KSWB on Monday. He swims the cove every day and captured video of the incident as he was getting out of the water.
“I looked to my left and I see a big sea lion just come out of the water and start charging and that’s when it turns to chaos,” Perez Estrada said. “Everyone was screaming and running around.”
There are no hard-and-fast regulations or fines. Posted signs warn not to touch the sea life, but with little to no enforcement, there’s really nothing to be done. Lifeguards do their best to remind folks, many of whom don’t understand English, to stay 10 feet away.
“People get bit here every summer, people get charged every summer. And for us locals, it’s annoying because we like and respect the wildlife here,” Perez Estrada added. “I understand their excitement and they want to get close, but it’s nature. You got to give a distance.”
While KSWB was in La Jolla on Monday, dozens of people were climbing on the rocks and getting dangerously close, even climbing into a cave where the pups rest. A father with his kids next to him tried to feed one, with the male sea lion just a couple of feet away.
Perez Estrada says it’s an everyday occurrence.
“We can see that right here there’s a sea lion, it’s obviously being a little aggressive, being territorial, and we have little kids standing maybe five feet away from it,” he said. “Parents should be more aware of the sea lion barking and that’s just a recipe for disaster.”
Another woman says she no longer goes down onto the sand at the cove because she was charged by a sea lion once during a scary encounter.
“I guess I got a little too close, not as close as these guys. He was really big and surprisingly fast. It’s one of those things, you’re just like, ’Oh my God. I’ve got to get away from him.’ I kind of tripped up the stairs. The terror was there.”