New Housing Crisis for San Francisco: Where to Put the Sea Lions

The number of visitors to San Francisco has not rebounded to its prepandemic level — not among humans, anyway. Sea lions, on the other hand, are swimming to the city in higher numbers than ever recorded.

This week, sea lion counters — yes, they exist — tallied 2,000 of the whiskered, blubbery creatures in the water alongside Pier 39 on the city’s northern edge. That’s 600 more than the previous record of 1,400 set in the early 1990s, according to Sheila Chandor, who has been the harbor master at Pier 39 since 1985.

“They’re not buying the doom loop!” Ms. Chandor said with a laugh, referring to the theory circulated by detractors that San Francisco is on the verge of ruin. “We have been truly overrun.”

This week, sea lion counters tallied 2,000 of the creatures alongside Pier 39 on San Francisco’s northern edge.

The marine mammals were initially drawn to a large school of anchovies just outside the Golden Gate Bridge, though it is not clear what has kept them around.

Adam Ratner, a sea lion expert at the Marine Mammal Center across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, described the surge as “truly remarkable.” He said his group tallied a record of 1,701 sea lions in 2009.