San Diego will seek lifting of seal removal order


SAN DIEGO – The city of San Diego said Tuesday it will go to court to ask a state judge to lift an order requiring the immediate removal of a colony of federally protected harbor seals from a La Jolla cove.

The announcement by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith was the latest development in an emotional and yearslong battle over who should have exclusive use of the protected cove — children or seals — in the posh seaside neighborhood of La Jolla.

On Monday, a San Diego Superior Court judge ordered the city to begin chasing away the creatures from the cove, called the Children's Pool, by Thursday or face heavy fines in order to comply with a 2005 ruling in a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled swimmer.

The city said it would blast recordings of barking dogs to scare away the pesky pinnipeds at the cost of $688,000 a year. San Diego cannot use force because the seals are a federally protected marine species.

But just hours later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that added a marine mammal park to the list of permissible uses for the Children's Pool — giving the city a legal tool that could allow the seals to stay put.

Goldsmith said the city will go to court on the matter Thursday.

"It's like saying the seals in the zoo are a nuisance," he said.

Children's Pool was created by a sea wall built in 1931 through a gift by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. The state, which owns the cove, subsequently placed the beach in a trust and granted the trust to the city of San Diego. The trust lists several possible public uses for it, including a children's beach and a park.

At a pro-seal rally Tuesday evening, a few dozen supporters lined the cove and shouted, "Take a stand, share the sand." Several dozen harbor seals lounged below them in the late afternoon sun.

Supporter Jennifer Rogge, 43, who lives nearby, said she was horrified by efforts to remove the seals.

"We should let them have it," she said. "They've been having their babies on this beach now for 15 years. It's a little late now to start shooing them off when there's generations of pups that don't know any other place to go."

Sukey Rice Ridgway, 65, who also lives nearby, said she remembered swimming in Children's Pool before the seals took over. She opposes their presence, even though she swam with the seals as a child.

"This was a beautiful pool and it was fabulous to swim down here and learn to snorkel and everything," she said. "It's unnatural now, it's man-made. It should not be for the seals."

Goldsmith said litigation over the cove's use has cost San Diego millions of dollars and could drag on for many more years unless the newly worded bill is allowed to take precedent.

Attorney Paul Kennerson, who represents the disgruntled swimmer, said Senate Bill 428 does not absolve the city of its responsibility to maintain the cove exclusively for the use of children.

Thursday's hearing is scheduled just 90 minutes before the city's deadline to begin chasing the seals away.

If the order is allowed to stand, Goldsmith said the city will be ready to begin removing the seals while simultaneously filing an emergency writ with California 4th District Court of Appeal.

Attorneys representing pro-seal groups have also filed emergency legal papers in both federal and state courts.

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For that much money that they would be spending a year on barking dog recording they could make a place somewhere else for the "children" to take a dip.

" Goldsmith said the city will go to court on the matter Thursday.

"It's like saying the seals in the zoo are a nuisance," he said. "

Actually it's not. Seals in the zoo have their own little compound area with some kind of retainment set up to keep them in. They are an exhibit at the zoo. In this case people want to use the cove with out them there or evidence they've been there. Two totally different things.