You can probably smell them before you see them. That's the sea lions, and I need to tell you the story of how they got here because it's one of the greatest hostile takeovers in real estate history.
A few weeks after the Loma Prieta earthquake in eighty-nine, one large male California sea lion hauled himself onto K-Dock at the Pier Thirty-Nine marina. Within weeks, sixty or seventy more showed up, and by February there were over three hundred. They just appeared and they refused to leave.
The eleven boat owners who were paying for their marina slips were furious. These animals weigh up to eight hundred and fifty pounds each — they blocked access to boats, they barked at all hours, and the smell is something you're experiencing right now, so I won't elaborate.
The marina called the Marine Mammal Center. Experts showed up, assessed the situation, and said — essentially — give up. Let them have the dock. The sea lions are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The boats wer
e relocated. K-Dock was surrendered entirely to animals that had shown up uninvited, generated noise and smell complaints, and won.
One of the evicted boat owners — a retired dentist named Gerald Phelps who'd kept his sailboat there for eleven years — reportedly showed up every morning for a week to stand at the edge of the dock and shout: I have a lease! The sea lions did not respond.
At peak —
