The City of San Diego is considering spending $700,000 for a public address system and sound track of barking dogs to drive the La Jolla seals off the beach. An actual member of the City Council has offered to use real barking dogs at a lower price. Do you have a better idea? Huh?
What’s your idea? The OB Rag blog has now established a beeg contest – prize unknown at the moment – for any reader to step forward with the winning idea of how to deal with the problems between humans and the seals.
I will start off the choices. Right here, and right now. And here it is:
Bring the seals to OB – we’ll take care of them!
It’s obvious that the people, the NIMBYs of La Jolla don’t want the seals. I say bring ’em on down to Ocean Beach – where we’ll find them a nice quiet beach somewhere along our pristine cliffs, pocket beaches and shoreline.
We already have a Dog Beach, just in case.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
How about this one: Leave the seals the fuck alone.
for the amount of $$$ the city was/is spending on the seals, maybe we could just have a nice “tea” party. not like the “tea” parties the Glen Beck fools had.
Bodysurfer – this is a family blog, for crissakes!
FG – seems you had tongue firmly planted in cheek when you let this out of its cage. Realistically, though, how would they be transported?
Are you suggesting they be at Dog’s Beach – that was confusing. Or are you saying place them at one of the pocket beaches along the cliffs? That would produce high-volumes of traffic on local OB streets when all the tourists and seal-lovers find them.
What if they try to swim back to LJ? It’s not that far. We’re back at where we started.
What if the surfers started to complain or started getting sick from the animals’ fecal matter and fiscal policies?
What if the seals started getting sick on all the human pollution, you know the pollution that gets surfers sick? Remember Donna Frye in STOP (Surfers Tired Of Pollution? What then? (tip o’ hat to lane)
There are so many beaches that humans have taken over and have polluted. Why can’t we just let the seals have one? It’s amazing to me that we as a city and society would come to this.
I declare bodysurferbob the winner! Whew! That was easy.
But seriously…La Jolla, TEAR…DOWN…THAT…WALL!!!
I’m down with those ideas but I remember Jon Christensen talked about flushing out our main bay http://obrag.org/?p=5616 at the south end to help clean it out.
It sounds like this man-made cove in La Jolla needs something along those lines. To pay for it you charge tourists a basic fee for a day/week/weekend with the seals and keep it the major attraction that it already is.
There must be a couple of Park Rangers that could use a decent gig.
Jon – had me laughing mucho.!
Dave G – don’t understand the Christensen connection – the seals are not connected to the main bay. Hey, talking about those park rangers – they’re all going to be laid off according to the Gov.
OB Joe – it was Jon C. who I heard talk about flushing the main bay. I thought the same idea could be done in La Jolla since the bacteria levels seem to be the main point in having the seals removed in the first place.
Take a tape of seals barking to the next city council meeting and crank that mother up!
The dogs barking jingle bells?
The seals make more sense than the politicians. They are doing what seals do. The politicians? Well I guess they are doing what they do as well…a whole lot of nothing……Taking up space….wait! THat’s what the seals do….
…it seems we are locked into some sort of feedback loop, and this thing will never end. As long as there are seals and politicians, they will be no resolution.
Let’s feed the politicians to the seals! Yay!!
Is seal meat any good? I can at least take one off of your hands as we got the new deep freezer working.
What if we put beer cans around the seals and the SDPD can haul them in for drinking on the beach?
Seriously, the southern California idiot convention gets more comical by the day to me. It seems like every important decision is about something not so important and important issues are ignored for vanity’s sake.
The next thing you know the sea will be too salty for us so we will need to find a way around the terrible conundrum of sea salt.
Maybe I’m just a grumpy old woman, but I’d rather have seals than children.
Well bodysurferbob said it first and BEST.
I second Abby, although I am not an grumpy old woman…well some may think I…well nevermind…
Little kids do not want to swim in seal poop.Moms don’t want their kids
to learn to swim in what the lifeguards consider a highly dangerous rescue area.
In 1931 there were no public pools like the ymca or Murray Callan swim schools for kids to learn to swim in . Most parents rich or poor have their kids learn to swim at Y camp (free with scholarship) from ages 2 and up.
There are hundreds of beaches ( including Dog Beach areas ) for toddlers to frolic in up to their waist . When kids get to be 5 years old or so they want a boogie board in the open waves , they do not want a fecal contaminated rocky area with no waves .
Valerie O ‘ Sullivan was run out of La Jolla to New Zealand and taxpayers have paid in excess of 1.5 million in Lawyer fees to Paul Kennerson for her FRIVOL0US lawsuit initiated over 16 years ago so she could swim in the open waters of La Jolla near Childrens Pool .
Did she even have children she wanted to take to the beach ?
THERE ARE MILES OF BEACHES FOR HER AND OTHER SWIMMERS TO SWIM THROUGH .
People like Valerie O’ Sullivan and Paul Kennerson a bottom feeding lawyer are opportunists abusing a legal system and a city that is bankrupt !! This is ludicrous . Imagine if their energies and monies were put into more productive pursuits like helping families with
poverty , hunger, illiteracy , drug addiction or gang violence .
Most of these medelsome people that want to drive out the seals are retired staunch republican dilletants with too much idle time on their hands who in their small minded short sighted superficial motives cannot coexist with sea creatures who were some of the first inhabitants of the planet.The seals were documented at Childrens Pool in the early 1800’s
Ellen Scripps tried to do something for the City but in fact never owned the land of the Beach. So even though she paid 50K to make the pool, it has long lost its usefulness for modern times .
Ms Scripps loved sea animals as evidenced by her efforts for the Aquarium . She is probably turning over in her grave about this .
But is it really her decision when she did not own the beach or the ocean . Building a dangerous seal wall did not give her ownership
of the sea and its inhabitants .
Thankfully Arnold (not a Democrat but wise in this matter ) and Christine Kehoe see the wisdom in not draining the City or more money in this neverending battle
and passed a bill to let the City Council decide the fate of the Seals and most city council members support the seal rookery .
My idea for PERMANENTLY solving the seal issue:
Keep Valerie O’Sullivan in New Zealand where she might be eaten by a shark (karmic Justice?)
SHAME ON HER !!
Disbar Paul Kennerson BOTTOM FEEDING ATTORNEY for STEALING from our already bankrupt city .
SHAME ON HIM !!
Poll parents of young children and 5 year olds who would rather boogie board than swim in seal feces .This will ensure that the Pools customer
base will have a PERMANENT voice stronger than the ornery , retired , medelsome mostly CONSERVATIVE republicans who seldom use the beach but want to be busy bodies AND TROUBLEMAKERS
Give these mostly over 55 seniors a community service project that puts their energies into more productive pursuits instead of having nothing better to do than create shameful ,expensive frivoulous conterproductive litigation that wastes taxpayers money .
SHAME ON THEM !!!
PUT LARGE PERMANENT SIGNAGE STATING THAT THE MAJORITY OF CITIZENS VOICES WERE HEARD AND THEY WERE TRIUMPHANT IN PROTECTING THE SEALS
THROUGH THE POWER OF A DEMOCRATIC VOTE AND VOICE .
THIS WILL PREVENT FUTURE FRIVOLOUS CHALLENGES BY OLD BIDDIES WITH TOO MUCH IDLE TIME . TOURISTS AND RESIDENTS WILL THEN RESPECT AND REVERE
THE BALANCE OF NATURE AND THE PROTECTION OF THE SEALS AS A NATIONAL TREASURE .
hope you like my ideas . Thank you for giving people a forum to have a voice .
Mom for Swmimming…
Thank you so much for your very complete and detailed discussion on this issue. Please come back and comment on the more current posts.
bodysurferbob has my vote, just leave them alone. really people “We’re in charge of Earth, but we have a responsibility to take care of it.” Frye
yes that includes the seals…just….leave them alone.
Four years later, I’m happy to see that the sea lions are still there, basking and frolicking. And my 15-month old niece started mimicking them within a minute of hearing their “chanting” :)