Sea Lion Research Paper

Sea Lions Dying at Increasing Rates

In five months alone, over 3,000 sea lion pups, at a point teetering towards death, washed ashore on Southern Californian beaches, fifteen times more than in past years, due to toxic algal blooms. Merriam Webster calls algal blooms, “rapid and excessive growths of a plankton population.” Since 1998, scientists have been aware of sea lions and their pups being intoxicated by domoic acids from toxic algal blooms. Agricultural and suburban areas are the main culprits as excess fertilizer and pesticides from fields and lawns are washed away in urban runoff and travel to our oceans by stormdrain. The nutrients in fertilizers and pesticides are overfeeding the algae, producing toxic algal blooms that expel poisonous
Sea lions have been affected in the worst ways and their well-being has been gradually declining for years at our hands. Fertilizers and pesticides are causing algae to emit toxins into the ocean that harm sea life.According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, algae produce toxic blooms when they overfeed on nutrients and such as phosphorous, nitrogen, and carbon, ingredients mainly found in fertilizers and pesticides. Such nutrients are not usually found in such abundance in oceanic environments. Therefore, the overfeeding is due to fertilizer and pesticide found in runoff, brought to the oceans via storm drain from agricultural or suburban areas. Humans are using more than necessary amounts of these pesticides that are harming the ocean in runoff due to the excess amounts. The National Center for Coastal Ocean Science states that harmful algal blooms do occur naturally; however, human activities have increased such toxicity in the waters such as