News

Ron Young's carpentry skills will soon be used on the beaches of Del Norte and Humboldt counties during rescues when volunteers need to hand-carry pinnipeds from the beach. Carriers are very tough to carry with an active pinniped inside. Ron's litters, made of sturdy 2 x 4 pine and oiled as defense against the salt water environment, will make those transfers from beach to rescue vehicle secure. O...
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As part of our on-going work observing and photo-documenting the recently injured CSL in the Crescent City Harbor, as coordinated by Dr. Dennis Wood, DVM and SA Tim Broadman, NOAA, NMMC staff today met and jointly observed pinnipeds with Crescent City Harbor District (CCHD) personnel. In the photo below CCHD Executive Secretary Nancy Suski points out an item of interest for volunteer Hospital Mana...
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Dr. Dennis Wood and NOAA Western Regional Stranding Network Coordinator Justin Viezbicke, along with NOAA Law Enforcement officers out of Eureka, have been fielding a lot of calls from distressed members of the public lately. Several California Sea Lions have been observed in the Crescent City Harbor sporting small to very large bite marks consistent with shark bites. One of the three CSLs initial...
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It's been a busy week for the public affairs department at the NMMC! This past week we were able to get two newspaper articles into the local Humboldt county press highlighting the plight of California Sea Lion pups (who are stranding in record numbers up and down the California coast this year). While on a lunch break while driving to Arcata to pick up Miranda's Rescue' donation of kennels, Vo...
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Miranda's Rescue for Large and Small animals graciously donated to the NMMC this past week 8 wonderful kennels! They range in size from 39 pound to 18 pound kennels and are perfect for helping us to provide shelter for our pinnipeds in rehabilitation here at the NMMC or to take with us on beach rescues. This donation is particularly timely as we had lost several of our best plastic kennels while t...
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Thanks to BM1 Jaime and the USCG men and women stationed at Humboldt Station for reporting a potentially stranded adult Northern Elephant Seal on the Samoa Spit this morning. See the attached photos to see this rare individual on our local beach! It is rare to see a Northern Elephant Seal in this part of Northern California because there are so few rookeries and the adults usually travel only t...
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With the rain letting up the last few days we have started into doing serious compound maintenance. After a couple days of the sun drying out weeks of rain it was finally time to start preparing and patching the compounds concrete structures. Last years Northern Elephant Seal Weaner stranding event, in which 29 NESW's were residents at the NMMC, really broke up the compound! Literally. The mass of...
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  Lynda Stockton, the NMMC's long serving Stranding Coordinator has a tough job. Whenever anyone in the two counties of Del Norte and Humboldt call in a potentially injured pinniped it is Lynda who takes in all the information and alerts all NMMC volunteers. She coordinates the response effort and more often than not ends up driving to meet Del Norte volunteers for a 'transfer' at the ...
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Our faithfull NMMC Rescue Truck, an early 2000 vintage 4WD Dodge Ram, developed problems with its automatic transmission lines late last year. Luckily noone was injured during the rescues and driving that took place before getting the truck into Dr. Dodge, aka Mr. Jeff Van Pelt, and his highly motivated advanced autoshop class at Del Norte High School. The truck apparently was suffering from expos...
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