Sea Lion in Gill Net Back in Malibu Area : Environment: The mammal eluded rescuers, then disappeared. Experts say it will choke to death unless the net can be removed.

A young California sea lion with a gill net slicing into its neck has returned to a small platform a quarter mile off the Malibu Pier, just when some observers were thinking it might be dead.

“It’s good to see him out there again,” said Phil Campanella, owner of Malibu Pier Sportfishing. The injured sea lion was spotted last week after an almost two-month absence.

Nicknamed Gilly, for the monofilament fisherman’s net caught around its neck, the mammal, thought to be male and to weigh about 150 pounds, attracted widespread attention in February when a sportfisherman saw it on the platform, where anchovies used as fishing bait are stored. Gilly’s plight became a cause celebre after a private rescue group launched a campaign to save it. Television and newspaper reporters dutifully swarmed to Malibu each time an attempt was made. But the young sea lion eluded its captors.

Experts say that unless it can be rescued and the gill net removed, Gilly, estimated to be about 3 years old, eventually will choke to death.

“It’s really just a matter of time,” said Judi Jones, director of Friends of the Sea Lion, a Laguna Beach group whose volunteers tried half a dozen times to rescue Gilly. “As the animal grows, the gill net will eventually cut off its circulation.” A full-grown male sea lion weighs about 600 pounds.

Despite Gilly’s return to the platform, where it rests for much of the day, Jones said the group does not plan to try again.

“We’re out of the picture,” she said. “We’ve done just about everything we know how to do, and I don’t see us continuing to be involved.”

Observers speculate that a fisherman found the sea lion caught in his net and cut the monofilament plastic to free the animal. Remnants of the net are visible around Gilly’s neck, giving the appearance of a collar.

Gill-net fishing near shore is illegal in Santa Monica Bay from Malibu Point to Palos Verdes Point, but fish and game officials say the nets are used farther north by fishermen seeking halibut in the waters off Point Dume. An initiative that would appear on the November ballot would ban the use of gill nets within three miles of shore throughout Southern California. Use of the nets is already largely restricted in the waters off the state’s central and northern coasts.

Officials say gill nets take a heavy toll among sea lions and other creatures off California’s coast each year.

“Just in the Malibu area alone, we have about 20 (dead) sea lions wash ashore each year, and many have been caught in gill nets,” said Lt. Jack Campbell of Malibu Baywatch, the county agency that patrols the beaches. “What’s unusual about this one is that he’s alive, and he popped up at a particularly conspicuous location.”

Jones, whose group rescues four to six injured sea lions a year, acknowledged that its volunteers have never managed to capture one of the mammals at sea.

“We’ve tried, just like we tried with this one . . . but it’s extremely tricky,” she said.