The number of young sea lions and seals that have been found stranded along the California coastline has prompted an unusual amount of rescues, a marine mammal group said Monday. Some 446 California sea lions, elephant seals, harbor seals and fur seals have been brought into the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito so far this year, Shawn Johnson, director of the center's veterinary science department, told The Associated Press. The number compares with the 302 animals that found shelter with the group during the same period in 2013 and the Sausalito center's record number of rescues, 418 animals in 1998. Some of the stranded sea lions and seals are emaciated, dehydrated or sick due to toxins. Johnson told the AP that the Marine Mammal Center doesn't typically see so many pups in the area this time of year. The young animals seem to have been weaned by their mothers sooner than normal. "This year, they've been weaned and separated from their mother a month or two early and have gone out and are trying to forage and survive on their own," Johnson said. The animals are sheltered and nourished at the center before being released back into the wild. While they are recuperating, the sea lions and seals stay in chain-link pens where they can splash in pools with one another. The center workers number each animal and make sure to approach the marine creatures with plywood shields since they have to stay wild to be able to survive in the ocean again. Along with the young animals, the center has helped dozens of adult sea lions that were ill, presumably from toxin-infused algae.   January is usually a slow time for the care center, but workers took care of around 50 sea lions in just that month this year, more than twice as in 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported.  "They were emaciated, listless," Christopher Nagle, a marine biologist at the center, described to the L.A. Times. "They were just pitiful." Federal officials have since termed the trend an "unusual mortality event," and researchers are trying to figure out why the animal mothers left their young early.

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