Excerpt:

Wildlife watchers out at Alameda Point got a jolt in May when a section of pier used by harbor seals as a "haul out" where they can rest and nest disappeared. One local blogger and longtime Point watcher, Irene Dieter, said she thinks the dock may have been dismantled deliberately, saying that a boom supporting it came and went and that ropes that held the dock in place appeared to have been cut and taken away.

Dieter has questioned whether the planned construction of a Water Emergency Transportation Authority operations and maintenance center nearby had anything to do with the loss of the dock, which sits along the Bay Trail behind the USS Hornet. But officials with the city and WETA, along with the East Bay Regional Park District - which manages the Bay Trail section that snakes along the shoreline - are all claiming they had nothing to do with the dock's disintegration.