A growing California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) population close to a large human population in southern California has lead to increasing human/sea lion interactions. These interactions range widely from positive impacts on people (e.g. tourism benefits, increased education) and on sea lions (e.g. marine protected areas, rescue efforts) to negative impacts on people (e.g. depredation, attacks, nuisances) and negative impacts on sea lions (e.g. entanglement in fishing gear, intentional killing). How the general public perceives these interactions is an important area of study to inform managers and scientists of the public context for management decisions. This capstone surveyed 5 southern California newspapers from January 1st 2005 to April 30th 2015 to investigate the topics and tone of news stories about sea lions. Results show that topic coverage was greatest for tourism/entertainment, general risks to sea lions, and general biology/information, totaling 444 articles of the 792 read. Results also showed

that the overall tone of news stories was positive and compassionate (240 articles with sympathetic tones towards sea lions, 176 with positive tones towards sea lions), as compared to 132 with negative tones towards sea lions, despite the full range of both positive and negative interactions occurring in the region. These results suggest that public perception in southern California is overall positive and sympathetic toward sea lions which may foster support for conservation initiatives and hamper the introduction of management actions designed to curtail the growing sea lion population size and the increasing number of potentially negative human-sea lion interactions.