pNPR News/p
pby GLORIA HILLARD/p
pIn recent months, more than 1,000 starving baby sea lions have been found on Southern California beaches, from Santa Barbara to San Diego. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just declared the crisis an “unusual mortality event.”/p
pOn a recent early morning, Peter Wallerstein is on the job on a beach near Marina del Rey, Calif. His white truck is a familiar sight along this coastline. Next to him, a small blond dog named Pumpkin rides shotgun./p
pWallerstein, the Marine Animal Rescue director for Friends of Animals, gets a call. A woman tells him she spotted a sea lion at the Fisherman’s Wharf at Cabrillo. “He’s just laying there; he doesn’t look good,” she says./p
pThe phone rings every five minutes, and it’s always about the same thing./p
pThere’s another call. This time, it’s a man telling Wallerstein that there’s a sea mammal that looks hurt./p
pa href=”http://www.npr.org/2013/04/09/176586940/starving-baby-sea-lions-flood-southern-california-shores”read full article on NPR News/a/p