Could seal population cause a shark attack?<\/b> As a 17-year resident of La Jolla, I\u2019ve watched the seal controversy closely. Or I should say, I\u2019ve smelled it. Living just upwind of their rank aroma, I still love seals, but the growing overpopulation of seals in La Jolla is woefully misplaced. The fervent welcome and protection from some is based on a misunderstanding of the situation and the risks. Extensive citations discuss the serious illnesses that humans will get from the documented contamination from seal fecal matter and other viruses and waste from the seal population in La Jolla. According to marine researchers, there are now hundreds of seals and they have eaten all the fish. Seals eat between 6 percent to 8 percent of their body weight in fish PER DAY. Those beautiful goldfish that we used to love to snorkel with? Gone. And yet we don\u2019t see anyone out there with a petition to save the fish. Just as the seals have preyed upon these former inhabitants of the cove, seals also attract great white sharks. Across the Web you see warnings, “Do not swim, snorkel or surf near seals.” Why then did they knowingly and enthusiastically open a great white bait shop in the middle of the most populated swimming, surfing and snorkeling areas in the world? Based on what I\u2019ve learned about the loss of a fantastic triathlete, father and husband, David Martin, to a great white shark in June 2008, the seals were a factor. Seals have a 25-mile colony range and when David was fatally attacked, common sense dictates that it was likely a morning shark-hunt-seal chase gone bad because that morning, according to lifeguards, a seal beached itself just before the attack. We can be sure that there are sound arguments from the seal colony\u2019s self-elected custodians, and that there are details of this debate that I have missed, but this letter is an appeal to rationality. Will the seals directly cause another shark attack on a human? One of the privileges of making it to the top of the food chain should be our legislators\u2019 commitment to do everything they can to keep us there. Mitch Thrower, Chairman, La Jolla Foundation, Inc.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Could seal population cause a shark attack? As a 17-year resident of La Jolla, I\u2019ve watched the seal controversy closely. Or I should say, I\u2019ve smelled it. Living just upwind of their rank aroma, I still love seals, but the growing overpopulation of seals in La Jolla is woefully misplaced. The fervent welcome and protection […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Letter to the Editor","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11593,11552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-no-images","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}