DANA POINT Donna Kalez looked out her office windows Sunday at the six docks at Dana Wharf and saw a woman trying to pose with a very robust sea lion on Dock 3.

“The lady probably got an awesome shot and it’s probably all over Instagram and Facebook,” said Kalez, who operates Dana Wharf Sport Fishing and Whale Watch. “I’m just glad she wasn’t bitten.”

At other times, Kalez sees people at the seawall taking pictures of multiple sea lions at the end of the dock. Then she sees those same people climbing over the locked dock gate to get closer. Even kayakers are coming in to get a better look.

Kalez has had to step up monitoring her privately leased docks for months now since OC Parks – the county agency that manages Dana Point Harbor – put up large colored inflatables, with waving arms and shaking hips, to scare away sea lions from the Orange County Harbor Patrol dock in the harbor’s east basin.

Those sea lions – which she considers a nuisance and a public safety hazard – have moved on to other docks like hers.

OC Parks initially bought six air dancers for $150 each in late June after dozens of sea lions had begun to cluster on the Harbor Patrol dock, turning it into a mini version of San Francisco’s Pier 39. Their weight – together more than 1,000 pounds – was making the concrete on the dock crack and break.

County and Dana Point Marina Co. officials also worried about boater safety.

“We didn’t want boaters coming to their boats at night to fall over sea lions on the docks,” said Doug Whitlock, general manager of Dana Point Marine Co., which manages Dana Point Harbor’s east basin.

Whitlock asked the county for 19 more inflatables after the initial test run showed them to be effective.

Now, three months later, Marisa O’Neil, spokeswoman for OC Parks, said the county’s effort has helped keep sea lions off the targeted docks. But it will take a lot more air dancers to cover the 1,400 boat slips in the harbor’s east basin.

With cooler temperatures, Whitlock and O’Neil said no more air dancers are being purchased at this time.

Whitlock, who has been in the harbor for 30 years, said the sea lions have become more plentiful in the last two years. He credits that to better water quality in the harbor and an explosion of more food options such as anchovies.

“There were so many anchovies in the water this summer that it actually darkened the water,” he said.

Other harbors, like Newport Beach’s, have experienced their fair share of sea lion nuisances. Newport Beach used water sprinklers, bright-colored netting and cement-filled bucket as barriers. In past years, the city hired a contractor to spray water at sea lions in the evenings to keep them at bay.

Sgt. Steve Marble with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol, said there were fewer sea lions in Newport Beach this summer.

“Maybe the sharks scared them off,” he said.

In the past three years, thousands of sea lions have stranded themselves because of an increased inability to find food near the Channel Islands breeding grounds. Marine mammal rescue centers from San Diego to San Francisco last year took in more than 4,400 sea lions. The Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach this year has rescued nearly 300.

Keith Matassa, executive director of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, has been tracking sea lions in Dana Point Harbor that have been released from his and other centers. He said he thinks the inflatables are a good, nonlethal way to deter them from docks and boats.

To increase the air dancer’s effectiveness, the county has used them in combination with other obstacles such as five-gallon water buckets. But many of those buckets have been pushed aside by the sea lions.

Orange County Harbor Patrol Sgt. John Hollenbeck said he recently saw a whole group of sea lions sleeping under an inflatable.

“I don’t know that they’re helping that much,” he said.

Still, Kalez has stepped up her game. Her docks don’t have electricity to inflate the dancing figures so she put up a kite-like banner to wave in the wind.

“But yesterday, we had a 2,000-pound sea lion on the dock and every single person wanted to come and touch it and take pictures. It was pretty scary,” she said.

Whitlock agrees with Kalez’ concerns. He said educating people about the sea lions and reminding them to stay away from the animals is key.

“They are wild animals,” he said. “When they bark at you, they can get very aggressive.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini