Sea lion (Photo : www.nytimes.com)
More than 1,450 sea lions have been seen stranded on the beaches of California since January crowding rescue centers beyond capacity, the New York Times reported.
Dr. Andrew Trites is one of the researchers who are working with the sea mammals. He has been studying the long fore-flippered animals in the North Pacific for three decades and has claimed that he has never seen anything like what the California beaches is showing.
"This will probably be the highest number of stranded sea lion pups on record. The last three years have been particularly high, and it looks as though that this year, 2015, will the highest ever recorded," he said.
The phenomenon has become has become a world-wide news and was magnified all the more due to the specifics of these animals' plight.
Scientists have cited that climate change is to be blamed for the circumstance. The rapidly changing environmental status caused the unusual warming of water, driving away sea lions' primary food sources. Since they cannot find food, the mothers are either seen lost in going back to their pups for feeding or are abandoning them for good.
"Unfortunately, the young animals pay the price. If the food is short, mothers can prove enough to keep themselves going, but can't eat enough to produce the extra energy to make milk," Trites said.
More than 90 percent of human-caused warming goes straight into the oceans. These increases are manifested in warming sea surfaces, which the Climate Change graph by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel has shown, the EPA showed.
