The Battle for the La Jolla Children's Pool

Some projects of The Animal Protection and Rescue League (APRL) such as “Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty” appear to represent lofty goals most people would support.  We all love animals. However,  certain other efforts, such as the APRL “Save the La Jolla Seals” project appear to be totally contrived, politicized schemes that have no bearing on protecting animals.  The APRL “Save the La Jolla Seals” campaign focuses the legal might of an intrusive New Yorker who moved to San Diego and has been attempting to push an East Coast way of thinking on us Californians through APRL. 

            It seems that APRL has little respect for local philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps who paid for the sea wall built in 1931 which created the area we call Children's Pool Beach or Casa Beach.  It’s long been a place for young children, many of whom are quite frightened when they first see the ocean, to gradually learn to adapt to ocean waves.  More than 30 years ago, my daughter was petrified the first time we took her to the ocean at Mission Beach.  Since we wanted her first experience to be one of joy, not fear, when she stepped her little toes into the ocean water, we took her to the Casa Beach to become acclimated to it.   As a young child, she was exhilarated when she gingerly placed her tiny toes into the ocean, then saw a few seals actually watching her splash!  At that moment, it was as if she, a human being, had become a part of nature with the wild water and its animals.  She learned to love and respect the seals.  As her mother I felt her connection when I watched the source of her pleasure.  To imagine removing this mystical experience from young children is more than despicable to me.  APRL should not destroy this sacred experience with nature.  In recent years APRL has partially won their battle against children experiencing the Children's Pool. Using "activists," who often enjoy sponsored salaries, they still fight the partial opening of the area, though they won a part of their plan - San Diego must place a rope blocking access to the Children’s Pool during the seal mating season.  

            Does this brilliant restriction protect the environment? Of course not.  The militant camera-shoved-in-your-face protesters, not only have become responsible for polluting the water at the Children's Pool with animal excrement, but they are creating an over population of seals. This blind interference produces another, more sinister problem: the over population of sharks which feed on seals.  If they are true animal rights activists, APRL would demand destruction of the wall at the Children’s Pool, which would then allow for seals to find their natural habitat. The Children’s Pool was not originally the habitat for the seals.  

            The controversy at the Children's Pool beach is yet another example of stupid, incompetent "pop science" combined with arrogant politics carried out by insensitive people. There is currently no plan that I’m aware of, to repatriate our seals to their natural habitat, and the people who agree with the paid objectors apparently need to be educated about seals.  Seals revel in icy waters, have no fear of people sharing the water, are gentle and playful, and have never bitten anyone in the Children’s Pool.   There are about 250,000 from Baja to Alaska.  They are not endangered and trust being in close proximity to humans. 

            I find it interesting that I could only find only one co-founder of APRL.  Who is the other co-founder?  What is the real reason behind destruction of the Children’s Pool, something amazingly divine created by man so children can interact with nature?