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The teenager was attacked by a sea lion in Long Beach while trying to become a junior guard cadet.
Phoebe Bertrand, 15, was hospitalized following a confrontation with the animal on Sunday after receiving several amputations in her right arm. She was then released from the hospital and was enough to return to school, but she said the attacks had shaken her.
“I’m stung by Stingrays, stuck into crabs, biting with little fish,” Bertrand said. “But sea lions?”
The girl said she was in the water about 25 feet from the Long Beach Shore during a junior lifeguard tryout. She was in a 1,000-yard swim home when she suddenly felt a lot of pain.
That’s when the sea lion bites her right arm, leaving her with bite marks and bruises.
“In the beginning, we were just assuming the worst as a shark,” she said. “I’m being attacked, it must be a shark. And I say, “Please don’t bite my arm. Don’t kill me. Please try it and don’t make me regret.”
She remembered at first that she was afraid to see what was biting her.
“The first bite – I went down, and I just saw the shadows, but I couldn’t know what it was,” Bertrand said. “When I came out, it was a way of scaring me to face it head on, and I cried out like this because I was biting me here.
After yelling for help, the teenager is able to reach the sand as a team of lifeguards, and her mother runs to her aid. She was then rushed to the emergency room.
“In my 25 years of service, I have never heard of anything like this happening before,” said Gonzalo Medina of the Long Beach Fire Department.
Sea lion sightings in Long Beach are common, but attacks are rare. Sea lions, which have become ill due to the toxic algae blooming, are on the rise in cases in Southern California, but it is unclear whether the animal that attacked Bertran is sick.
“It’s true that acid side effects are potentially aggressive behaviors, but there’s no way to communicate,” Medina said. “All we know is that the sea lions were very agile and very fast.”
The sea lions swam quickly, so it is unclear what happened to the sea lions.
Despite her horrifying encounter and the anxiety that comes with it, Bertrand said she was determined to go back to the water and try again with the tryout.
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