When Jason Bietz took his daughter for an outing at the beach, he did not imagine it would result in the federal government circulating a photo of him, seeking to identify a suspect accused of sawing off a sea lion’s head and carrying it away in a plastic bag.
But that is what happened.
On Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries law enforcement office released a photo of Bietz and offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, civil penalty or criminal conviction in the July 27 decapitation of a sea lion at Point Pinos Beach in Pacific Grove.
The next day, the agency took down the photo and said that no mammal parts had been taken from the beach after all.
Bietz, who lives in Hanford, says he didn’t decapitate the animal. He said the investigation stems from a miscommunication with a fellow-beach goer that took place while he and his teenage daughter, who is interested in marine biology, were looking at a dead seal.
Rashelle Diaz, a Monterey resident who reported the incident to authorities, has a different memory of the events. She says she confronted Bietz and his daughter after she saw him leaning over the sea lion and prodding it with a knife.
In a video Diaz recorded of the incident, she asks Bietz what he needs a dead seal for, to which he responds, “I told you we’re just taking the head.”
“For what?” she asks him.
“The skull,” he says.
“To dry it?” she continues.
“Yes,” he responds.
Bietz told The Times on Wednesday that he doesn’t recall exactly what he said during the July confrontation but that it’s possible he said “that I was just going to take the head” as a “smart ass, sarcastic remark.”
Bietz also denied accusations that he was carrying a knife on the beach, saying that the object photographed in his hand was likely either a stick, his phone or the lanyard attached to his keys.
Rashelle Diaz photographed Jason Bietz on the beach with an object in his hand on July 27, 2025. The pair engaged in a confrontation over a dead sea lion on the beach.
(Jason Bietz)
Bietz said he reached out to NOAA investigators on Monday to clear his name once he saw the photo of himself circulated by the agency.
NOAA then removed Bietz’s photo from its post and noted that the man had been located and that it had determined that no marine mammal parts were removed from the beach.
When The Times reached out to a NOAA spokesperson for comment Wednesday, a reporter received an automated reply stating that the spokesperson is furloughed due to the federal shutdown and will respond to emails once government functions resume.
The agency’s initial post had stated that a man was observed using a hunting knife to remove the head of a deceased sea lion around 8:40 p.m. on July 27. It further said that “after sawing off the seal’s head, he placed the head in a zip-style plastic bag and left the area.”
That mirrored accusations Diaz made to local TV station KSBW in July. She told the outlet that she confronted Bietz as he was “decapitating a seal he had already skinned, and separated the skull from the body” and that he then removed the head in a Ziploc bag.
Based on NOAA’s update, Diaz told The Times that she now knows that the head was not taken from the beach.
“I currently know that he did not decapitate it, even though he said that’s what he was doing, so that’s what I had assumed that he did,” she said Wednesday. She also said she saw the father and daughter carrying something away in a plastic bag, so she had assumed it was the skull.
“Now he [Bietz] is everywhere, saying that he is being falsely accused,” she said. “But I think I really just stopped him in the act. I caught him, and then he wasn’t able to do what he was planning on doing, which was my goal.”
Under California’s Marine Mammal Protection Act, it is illegal to harm sea lions or collect any of their parts while dead or alive. Violations are punishable by a civil fine of up to $36,498 per violation or a criminal penalty of up to $100,000 in fines and up to one year in jail per violation.
During the recording of the encounter, Diaz also informs Bietz that Point Pinos Beach is in a protected area where it is illegal to remove any items.
“You can’t bring shells home, you can’t bring crustaceans home, you can’t bring skulls home, specifically,” she tells him in the video, to which he responds, “What law says that?”
Bietz denied accusations that he skinned the skull of the sea lion before the confrontation with Diaz. He said that he and his daughter found the carcass with the skull already clean of skin earlier that afternoon.
He provided The Times with a photo showing the clean skull attached to the sea lion’s body with the metadata stating it was taking at 3:42 p.m. — around four hours before the confrontation with Diaz.
“She made accusations that I skinned its skull, and I severed its head and then I took it with me,” he said. “Those statements have been 100% unequivocally refuted.”
Diaz said she was trying to protect marine life on local beaches and never intended to personally attack Bietz.
“My main goal was to spread awareness about the laws and protecting our beloved marine mammals here,” she said, “not to have this whole $20,000-reward-if-you-find-him-type thing.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
