CARLSBAD, Calif. (KSWB) – A “very pregnant” sea lion crashed an upscale San Diego County golf course Thursday, presenting a unique challenge for rescuers who eventually ushered her back to sea.
Workers at Omni La Costa Resort first spotted the animal on the green Thursday morning. That’s some three miles from the coast, though rescuers later noted that the animal came inland via the Batiquitos Lagoon, likely making its on-ground trek “only” a mile or so.
Golf course staff called SeaWorld Animal Rescue, and when program supervisor Jeni Smith and her team arrived, the animal didn’t appear to be in distress or in any immediate danger, she told KSWB.
“She was comfy, cozy on the golf course,” Smith said.
And the animal, which Smith described as “fairly large” and “very pregnant,” didn’t appear terribly concerned about all the fuss.
“She didn’t seem to be too alarmed by us,” Smith said. “She did keep her eye on us, and she was just relaxing on, I think it was the 16th hole, I guess.”
That’s in contrast to a harrowing rescue Smith and her team made earlier this year when a sea lion managed to get onto a busy San Diego freeway.
Still, the SeaWorld team wanted to get the mom-to-be back to her natural habitat quickly and carefully. Smith said it was too far to the lagoon to simply walk along, coaxing the animal back toward the water.
When they tried to approach the sea lion, she started waddling in the wrong direction — and moving pretty fast despite her significant size, Smith said. The rescuers blocked the animal’s path east with their truck and regrouped.
Smith eventually decided to enlist resort employees, giving them a “quick safety briefing” and handing each of them a “shield” — a big sheet of plastic with handles that they could use to block the animal’s path. Rescuers and bewildered golf course workers lined up and created a tunnel of sorts, giving the sea lion a path and guiding it toward the parked rescue truck.
The plan worked, and once the sea lion was safely corralled, the rescue team took off for nearby Carlsbad State Beach. There, a crowd of locals and summer tourists watched the rescue with excitement.
In these still images taken from cellphone video, SeaWorld Animal Rescue team members coax a sea lion out of their transport truck, before she makes her way safely back into the sea on June 23, 2022. (Photos: SeaWorld San Diego)
For a moment, the show-stealing sea lion didn’t want to leave the truck, Smith said. But eventually, she clamored out and back onto the sand, swimming safely into the ocean.
The rescue team thinks it won’t be long before she returns to shore to give birth to her pup. Smith said the Omni staff “actually saw the pup moving inside.”
The team hopes the birth will happen on the beach and not on some tennis court somewhere.
Smith thanked the Omni staff profusely, not just for help coaxing the animal but also for letting them drive the rescue truck onto their pristine course.
“That was the first thing I asked,” she said.
SeaWorld doesn’t name the animals it rescues and returns to their habitat, but lifeguards who helped escort the rescue team opted for the golf-themed nickname “Bogey.”
That’s only slightly less on-the-nose than “Freeway,” the widely used nickname for the aforementioned sea lion that made its way onto state Route 94 in January. That animal is actually a repeat offender: Rescuers had previously wrangled it on San Diego’s busy Harbor Island Drive and even at a La Jolla, California, gift shop.
Despite Bogey and Freeway’s exploits, Smith said sea lions making it so far onto land remains pretty rare. The team thinks the lagoon may have had a food source that the sea lion was seeking, but they are still not sure why it wandered all the way onto the green.