San Francisco Is Going Nuts Over a Giant Sea Lion Named Chonkers
an Francisco is not only on the rebound, she is in love. His name is Chonkers. He is a 2,000-pound Steller sea lion who swam up to a dock on Pier 39 a month ago and has decided to stay.
The city noticed immediately. Chonkers is about three times the size of the California sea lions that typically inhabit the San Francisco Bay, and when he crashes his mighty frame down on the dock he’s chosen to sleep on, it sounds like an oak tree falling down. Online commenters quickly began tracking his every move.
Soon after he was spotted, a San Francisco-based Redditor named Des Tan called him Chonker, a play on chonky, which is slang for humorously chubby, and it stuck. “Chonkus Maximus is the Latin name I believe,” wrote another Redditor.
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Chonkers is a Steller, a different species from his dockmates, according to Laura Gill, public programs manager with Marine Mammal Center. Her team has been tracking the giant since March 13. Stellers are lighter-colored yellowy giants that you are more likely to spot in Washington state or Alaska.
Sea lions are thigmotactic, a scientific term for very social creatures who like to cuddle. And they like to horse around. So, despite his size, Chonkers seems to fit right in. He can often be seen sunning himself on the dock, with other sea lions dozing or barking away nearby. Last week he delighted visitors by shooting his one-ton body out of the water and hopping up on one of the floating docks west of the pier, sending two of the previously lounging 700-pound California sea lions skeetering into the bay’s frigid water.
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Of the six species of birds and mammals that Steller discovered during the voyage, two are extinct (Steller's sea cow and the spectacled cormorant) and three are near threatened and vulnerable (Steller sea lion, Steller's eider and Steller's sea eagle). The sea cow, in particular, a massive northern relative of the dugong, lasted only 27 years after Steller discovered and named it. The sea cow had a limited population that quickly became victim of overhunting by the Russian crews that followed in Bering's wake.
Despite the hardships the crew endured, Steller studied the flora, fauna, and topography of the island in great detail. Of particular note were the only detailed behavioral and anatomical observations of Steller's sea cow, a large sirenian mammal that once ranged across the Northern Pacific during the Ice Ages, but whose surviving relict population was confined to the shallow kelp beds around the Commander Islands, and which was driven to extinction within 30 years of discovery by Europeans.
Based on these and other observations, Steller later wrote De Bestiis Marinis ('On the Beasts of the Sea'), describing the fauna of the island, including the northern fur seal, the sea otter, Steller sea lion, Steller's sea cow, Steller's eider and the spectacled cormorant. Steller claimed the only recorded sighting of the marine cryptid Steller's sea ape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Steller
Steller had his own problems with MAHA:
Native Americans in the PNW knew that certain herbs had antiscorbutic (scurvy-fighting) factors; these have since been proven to contain vitamin C (ascorbic acid; "ascorbic" from Latin for "no scurvy" ). It's not clear to me if Steller ever met NAs, but he might have learned this from Siberian natives who did have some communications with Alaskan natives.
... had all the doctors of Louvain and Montpellier been there, with all the drugs of Alexandria, they could not have done so much in a year as did this tree in eight days...
The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, 1536
Medicinal Use of Forest Trees and Shrubs by Indigenous People of Northeastern North America
https://www.fao.org/4/xii/0191-a2.htm
200 years later, most European doctors, navies, and sailors still did not know how to prevent scurvy.
Steller is a greatly underappreciated historical figure; he died young, suffering from a fever and left outdoors in a sleigh while his Russian guards spent hours drinking in an inn.
Steller's Jay lets you know you are west of the Mississippi River; the Eastern Blue Jay does the same for the East.