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Along some 70 miles of Southern California coastline, usually curious and playful sea lions are attacking humans in the water.
The animals are being poisoned by the ocean they live in, experts say, citing reports of sick sea lions at unprecedented levels. And many are dying.
Pheobe Beltran, a 15-year-old girl in Long Beach, was swimming on March 30, when a sea lion attacked her right arm.
"I was just so scared, so shocked, but I still felt the immense pain on my arms, like, over and over again," Beltran, who was finishing up a 1,000-yard swim during tryouts to become a junior lifeguard, told CNN affiliate KCAL.
Up the coast in Ventura County on March 21, a surfer near Oxnard, was bitten by a sea lion in open water. The attack left him "shaken" to his core, he said.
The cause is less demonic and more likely domoic acid toxicosis caused by toxic algal bloom, often referred to as red tide, experts say.
"The sea lions are coming in almost comatose by the time they're stranding. Something is happening in this particular bloom that seems worse on multiple levels," John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center in Los Angeles, told CNN.
"But volume-wise, it's definitely the worst we've ever seen."
📸: Mario Tama/Getty Images
