14 DAY TRIAL // As explained on several occasions, an unusually high number of sick California sea lion pups have stranded on California's southern coast since the beginning of the year until present day.
Recent reports say that, all things considered, the conservationists in charge of keeping a close eye on biodiversity in this part of the United States have thus far taken nearly 1,100 stranded sea lion pups under their care.
All of these sea lions were born in the summer of 2012 or later, the people who helped rescue most of them explain.
The pups are all emaciated and dehydrated. Needless to say, their overall body weight is far too low for them to be safely returned to the wild after having been given some food and administered treatment.
In the aftermath of these occurrences, the country's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forced to declare an Unusual Mortality Event for California sea lion pups, Oceana reports.
Now that the Unusual Mortality Event has been declared, a team of scientists is to be pieced together and asked to review all the data collected with respect to these strandings since the beginning of the year until now.
It is hoped that these scientists will succeed in pinning down the underlying cause of these events. Furthermore, the researchers are expected to come up with one or possibly even more solutions to this crisis, the same source informs us.
By the looks of it, the declaration of the Unusual Mortality Event will also compel the country's National Contingency Fund to provide some of the funding needed in order to rescue and rehabilitate the sick sea lion pups.
According to Live Science, several biologists suspect that the sea lion pups ended up starving after a series of unfortunate environmental conditions caused a decline in the local anchovies and sardines population.
Thus, whereas adult sea lions can change their dietary habits and find other species to feed on, the pups are bound to experience starvation once their customary food source is no longer available.