California sea lions are abundant and charismatic marine mammals, yet individuals face significant welfare threats from fishing gear entanglement, domoic acid poisoning, and complex human interactions in coastal areas.
Sea lion welfare challenges are diverse and often the result of human activities. Entanglement in discarded fishing line or nets creates progressive injury as the animal grows and tightens the loop around its neck, causing laceration, infection, and eventual suffocation over months. Domoic acid poisoning causes acute neurological events - seizures on beaches that leave affected animals vulnerable to predation, trauma, and dehydration before they can be rescued. Human feeding creates habituation that increases conflict around fishing docks, leading to lethal control of individuals that have learned to associate humans with food. The combination of fisheries bycatch, algal bloom toxins, and direct human feeding creates compounding individual welfare crises for a population that is otherwise recovering.