San Francisco, Dec 30 (THAINDIAN NEWS) It was a big mystery when suddenly out of the blue, over 1000 sea lions appeared in San Francisco and enthralled the visitors. And it is now again a big mystery why they suddenly left the pier and that too, all at once. The record number of sea lions delighted the tourists and baffled the experts, and now after their disappearance, the mystery just deepens.

“They do move off,” Jeff Boehm said. He also said that in the fall, older sea lions head to breeding colonies in the Channel Islands, off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel. Younger sea lions, he said, “don’t mind those rules and tend to travel far and wide.”

The likely reason for their appearance and disappearance is a food-source. They probably had a great food source, which lured them, to come to the pier in record numbers and later when the party, ended then the sea lions also called it a day and left San Francisco. The animals started leaving in groups after Thanksgiving, and suddenly there were none at all, left at the pier.

“Most likely, they left chasing a food source,” said Jeff Boehm, executive director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, which runs an information center and gift shop at the famous Pier 39 where the sea lions were sighted. “It’s probably what kept them here in the first place.”