Founded in 1975, The Marine Mammal Center is a "nonprofit organization that rescues, rehabilitates and releases injured, sick and orphaned marine mammals (seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, whales and sea otters)." The Center is "the largest marine mammal facility of its kind in the world to combine animal rehabilitation with an on-site research lab, and the only one to treat between 500 and 1200 animals a year."
"The Center's ultimate goal is to release animals back to the wild." But the Center observes that "occasionally we will have an animal that is non-releasable. Animals that we have designated as non-releasable have included a sea lion with epilepsy, a northern fur seal that was hit by a car after coming ashore in Berkeley, and a harbor seal pup that suffered brain damage after being illegally picked up from a beach by unauthorized people who allowed him to get overheated."
On its website (focused laregly on fundraising) the Center explains that it tries to "place these animals in licensed zoos or oceanaria, where they will be cared for properly and will be with others of their species." On a recent NOVA film, the clinicians admit that some animals must be euthanized because there is nothing that the Center can do for them.
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