Not only is it sad and disrespectful, it's also illegal.

4 Not only is it sad and disrespectful, it's also illegal. When Sue Pemberton and her team from the California Academy of Sciences arrived here at Ocean Beach last week to check on a dead sea lion, they found the animal in a more disturbing state than expected. By the time my responder went out to look at it the next day, the head had been removed illegally. The associate manager of marine mammal stranding says scientists will remove heads of dead mammals for research collection. But that's not what happened here. Pemberton suspects someone took it upon themselves to decapitate the sea lion. And it's not the first time. A few weeks ago down, I want to say, in Monterey or Santa Cruz County, where somebody was seen removing a skull and that person has also been arrested and charged.