Federal authorities are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a man who was filmed decapitating a sea lion on a beach in Monterey County earlier this summer.
Investigators from the National Marine Fisheries Service say the sea lion was believed to have already been dead on Point Pinos Beach in Pacific Grove, about 2 miles from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, when a man drove up in a Cadillac Escalade, and used a hunting knife to saw the animal’s head off.
He placed it in a plastic bag and drove a way as horrified onlookers watched.
A similar incident occurred at Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay in December. Then, a man in his 30s decapitated a dead sea lion, put the animal’s head in a plastic bag and rode away on an e-bike, witnesses said. The fisheries service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has offered a $20,000 reward in that case also.
Under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, a landmark environmental law signed by President Nixon in 1972, it is illegal to harm or harass marine mammals like sea lions, sea otters, or whales, and collect their parts, even if they are dead.
Rachel Hager, a spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Washington D.C., declined requests for an interview on Tuesday.
On July 30, however, Rashelle Diaz, a Monterey County resident, told KSBW TV that she saw the man, whom authorities described as a white male, 5-feet-9, in his late 50s or early 60s, with a white beard, cutting the dead sea lion’s head off on the beach.
“He was decapitating a seal he had already skinned, and separated the skull from the body,” Diaz said.
She walked over the man and told him he was breaking the law.
“90% of the locals in Monterey are aware of that,” Diaz said. “You cannot go near a seal alive or dead. It’s the law.”
He told her he was doing marine biology research and had a permit.
“This man is in flip-flops, huge hunting filet knife,” she said. “You know, he’s got a hoodie on, some camo shorts. Not professional looking at all.”
As he ignored her warnings, she filmed the incident, which occurred at 8:40 p.m. on July 27. Federal authorities began looking into it after that.
“I saw the man leave with a seal skull in a Ziploc bag,” she said.
They contacted Moss Landing Marine Lab, which is run by San Jose State University. The lab operates a stranded marine mammal program that investigates dead sea lions and other marine mammals, with workers measuring them, sometimes performing necropsies, or animal autopsies, and adding the information into NOAA databases so scientists can track trends in ocean health.
The program said none if its workers matched the description of the man, said Sebastian Caamano, stranding coordinator for the Moss Landing Stranding Network.
“When I first heard about this I was assuming it was a guy who just wanted some kind of memorabilia,” Caamano said. “It was weird.”
Marine mammals that are stranded and still alive are often picked up by the Marine Mammal Center, a non-profit group in Marin County that runs an animal hospital to nurse ocean wildlife back to health.
Giancarlo Rulli, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center, said officials there don’t know why anyone would want the head of a dead sea lion. Nor do scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said spokesman Emerson Brown.
The two California incidents are not the first.
In 2020, five headless sea lions were discovered off Vancouver Island, Canada. Four headless sea lions were found on Vancouver Island in 2013. And at least 12 seal carcasses were found on the banks of the St. Lawrence in Quebec in 2014, according to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports at the time.
Anyone with information about the California incidents is asked to call the National Marine Fisheries Service at 1-800-853-1964.