sea lion
© Nicole Boliaux, The Chronicle
A sea lion bit a woman swimming at San Francisco's Aquatic Park on Thursday in the fourth such attack in about a month.

The woman apparently was not badly hurt, but authorities are worried about further attacks.

A retired San Francisco firefighter also swimming in the bay around 7 a.m. helped the woman as she came out of the water, said Fire Department Lt. John Baxter, but the woman was able to walk on her own. She was taken to a hospital.

Alice Ma said she and the victim are members of the South End Rowing Club, and that they were swimming together when the sea lion latched onto her friend and tried to drag her underwater.

"It chomped down onto her," said Ma, who lives in San Jose. "It bit her and pulled."



The woman didn't want to go to the hospital, "but we convinced her she needed to go," Ma said, adding that she "is very much an independent woman. She's a go-getter. She's a fighter."

Lee Hammack, a member of the Dolphin Swim and Boat Club, was swimming nearby and saw the victim get out of the water.

"She was bleeding pretty badly," he said. "But I know her — she's tough, she's not scared."

Hammack said he planned to take his daily swim Friday at Aquatic Park, "though my wife may have other ideas."

"This is an anomaly," said Hammack, who has been swimming with the club for 32 years. "Twenty years or so ago there was a sea lion attack there, and there was distemper going around. It happens.

"We've been swimming there (in the bay) for over a century as a club, and I don't intend to stop."

The fact that four attacks by sea lions have occurred at the popular spot prompted warnings for swimmers.

"We're encouraging the public, if they are swimming, that they swim in pairs and keep a close eye out," Baxter said.

The cove is run by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, which closed the swimming spot for five days after the last sea lion attack on Dec. 15. Lynn Cullivan, a spokesman for the park, said there are no plans to close it this time because this latest attack may just be a singular event.

"It's not totally unusual," he said.

In the Dec. 15 attack, a male swimmer suffered a "severe bite" on his thigh and was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, the Fire Department said. The man was injured one day after another swimmer was treated at the hospital for a bite on the arm. Both were members of the South End Rowing Club.

Another swimmer was bitten the previous week, but did not require hospitalization.

It's not known whether the same animal was responsible for all the attacks. It's not even certain the culprit or culprits were sea lions — authorities said they could have been harbor seals. But witnesses to the latest attack insist it was a sea lion.

Such attacks aren't unheard of. The Marine Mammal Center conducted a study of 10 pinniped bites in San Francisco Bay and one in Puget Sound, Wash., from 2011 through 2013. It did not find any identifiable pattern to the bites, except in one case the victim was trying to pet a harbor seal and another swimmer got between a seal and some bait that a fisherman had dumped.