Saving Seafood

Shutdown Stunting Oregon Bid to Keep Salmon Alive

January 15, 2019 — Oregon’s effort to prevent California sea lions from feasting on the dwindling winter steelhead at Willamette Falls will not proceed as planned because of the federal government shutdown.

Officials have so far trapped and euthanized four California sea lions that collectively eat about one quarter of the shrinking returns of winter steelhead at Willamette Falls. The water below the falls have become a reliable bonanza for hungry sea lions, along the journey from the ocean back to the headwaters where steelhead were born, and where they will spawn.

Last year, only 512 wild winter steelhead returned from the sea, stymied by poor ocean conditions and a network of dams that crowd the way home. But a relatively new problem threatens to eclipse the first two: the hungry mouths of dozens of sea lions waiting at the falls.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife launched a program to capture and kill the massive marine mammals after attempts to haul them back to the ocean failed. Despite being trucked hundreds of miles to the southern coast of Oregon, the animals promptly swam back – one sea lion made the return trip in three days.

This year could be the third in a row with the worst returns on record, and state biologists aren’t optimistic.

“There’s potential that we’re already past the point where they can recover and we just won’t know it for another decade,” said Shaun Clements, senior policy analyst with Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Oregon begins killing sea lions after relocation fails

January 11, 2019 — Oregon wildlife officials have started killing California sea lions that threaten a fragile and unique type of trout in the Willamette River, a body of water that’s miles inland from the coastal areas where the massive carnivorous aquatic mammals usually congregate to feed.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained a federal permit in November to kill up to 93 California sea lions annually below Willamette Falls south of Portland, Oregon, to protect the winter run of the fish that begin life as rainbow trout but become steelhead when they travel to the ocean.

As of last week, wildlife managers have killed three of the animals using traps they used last year to relocate the sea lions, said Bryan Wright, project manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s marine resources program.

The adult male sea lions, which weigh nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) each, have learned that they can loiter under the falls and snack on the vulnerable steelhead as the fish power their way upriver to the streams where they hatched.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

U.S. Senate passes bill making it easier to kill sea lions on Columbia River

December 10, 2018 — A bill that would make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River has cleared the U.S. Senate.

State wildlife managers say rebounding numbers of sea lions are eating more salmon than ever and their appetites are undermining billions of dollars of investments to restore endangered fish runs.

Senate Bill 3119, which passed Thursday by unanimous consent, would streamline the process for Washington, Idaho, Oregon and several Pacific Northwest Native American tribes to capture and euthanize potentially hundreds of sea lions found in the river east of Portland, Oregon.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KATU

Lethal force approved for sea lion at Willamette Falls

November 16, 2018 — The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s plan to remove problem California sea lions from the Willamette River Falls using lethal force has been approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The sea lions are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection act, but the federal agency approved the plan because the pinnipeds have put runs of salmon and steelhead in the river in jeopardy of extinction.

ODFW filed the application because analyses showed that high levels of predation by sea lions (25 percent of the steelhead run in 2017) meant there was an almost 90 percent probability that one of the upper Willamette steelhead runs could go extinct.

Read the full story at The Colombian 

Alaska Fishermen Sentenced for Killing Endangered Sea Lions

November 8, 2018 — An Alaska salmon boat skipper who killed endangered Steller sea lions with a shotgun and hindered an investigation has been fined $20,000 in federal court.

Jon Nichols, 31, of Cordova, was sentenced Tuesday to five years’ probation, three months of home confinement and 400 hours of community service.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Smith also ordered Nichols to publicly apologize in a national commercial fishing magazine.

One of Nichols’ crewmen, Theodore “Teddy” Turgeon, 21, of Wasilla, also shot the endangered animals. He was sentenced to four years’ probation, one month of home incarceration and 40 hours of community service. He was fined $5,000.

Steller sea lions are the largest members of “eared” seals family, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and can live to be 20 to 30 years old. Females can reach nearly 580 pounds (263 kilograms) and males up to 1,245 pounds (565 kilograms) in the North Pacific Ocean. They get their name from the big males’ intimidating roar as they protect harems.

Steller sea lions are voracious feeders of fish. Adults eat upward of 6 percent of their body weight per day. They target fish that are always available such as pollock and cod as well as seasonally available fish such as herring and salmon.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

California bans giant ocean fishing nets blamed for killing sea turtles, whales

September 28, 2018 — Ending years of controversy and debate, Gov. Jerry Brown late Thursday signed a new law phasing out the use of giant ocean fishing nets used to catch swordfish, but blamed for accidentally killing sea turtles, dolphins and other sea creatures.

The bill, SB 1017 by state Sen. Ben Allen, D-Redondo Beach, requires the state to set up a program to buy back nets and fishing permits from commercial fishermen who work in the state’s drift gill net fishery.

The nets — giant nylon curtains that can stretch one mile long and extend 100 feet underwater — are used mostly by fishermen between San Diego and Big Sur. Although they are intended to catch swordfish, thresher shark and opah, studies have shown that they entangle dozens of other marine species, including whales, dolphins, sea lions and sea turtles, fish and sharks. Those animals, known as bycatch, are often thrown back overboard, injured or dead.

“There is no longer room in our oceans for any fishery that throws away more than it keeps,” said Susan Murray, deputy vice president for Oceana, an environmental group with offices in Monterey that pushed for the new law.

Read the full story at Mercury News

 

Sea Lions And Orcas Battle It Out In Puget Sound

September 12, 2018 — In the early 1980s, a group of recreational fishermen dropping lines near the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Ballard, Washington, started complaining about a particularly large and wily California sea lion.

The shore anglers had good reason to be annoyed. Each time they hooked a fish, this sea lion would pop up and eat it off their line.

The sea lion, nicknamed Herschel by the fishermen, quickly moved on from taking fish off lines to gobbling up steelhead as they tried to make it over the ladder south of the locks. Here, water sluices down stair-stepped pools and migrating fish jump from pool to pool until they reach the Lake Union Ship Canal and spawning grounds beyond. Herschel found that by hanging out under the fish ladder he could gorge himself on steelhead trying to make it upstream.

Over the next few years, it became apparent that Herschel and a handful of other large male sea lions were seriously depleting the winter steelhead run, putting the population that spawns in Lake Washington’s tributaries at risk of extinction.

California sea lions spend part of the year at breeding sites on the Channel Islands. The bulls that feed at the bottom of fish ladders, where salmon practically swim down their gullets, have a distinct advantage in their battles for mates and territory.

Read the full story at OPB

 

Sea lion bill comes up for a vote in the Senate tomorrow

August 2, 2018 –Tomorrow, the Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the bipartisan “Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act.” The bill, introduced by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell and Idaho Senator Jim Risch would give state and tribal fishery managers more flexibility to deal with predatory sea lions in the Columbia River system that are threatening both salmon and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The executive session will begin at 6:45 am PT.

Sea lion populations have increased significantly along the West Coast over the past 40 years; today, there are roughly 300,000. These sea lions have entered into habitat where they had never been before, including areas around the Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls. A recent study showed that winter steelhead populations near Willamette are likely to go extinct if the sea lion population is not addressed immediately.

Read the full story at KXLY

Washington: Congress Voting To Let More Sea Lions Be Killed To Protect Salmon

August 1, 2018 — In a clash of protected species, Pacific Northwest members of Congress are coming down in favor of salmon. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to vote Thursday morning to make it easier to kill sea lions who feast on Columbia and Willamette River salmon and steelhead.

A wide majority of the U.S. House has already voted to raise the limit for how many sea lions can be killed below Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls. Now a companion bill in the Senate is gaining steam. It’s very similar in giving state and tribal wildlife agents more latitude to kill the nuisance predators in the river system.

The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Idaho Republican Jim Risch and Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell.

Sea lions gather each winter and spring below the Bonneville Dam fish ladders to intercept salmon moving upriver to spawn.

“Salmon consumption at the Bonneville Dam is five times what it was five years ago, and threatened and endangered species of salmon are being damaged by sea lions in the Columbia River,” Risch said in a statement.

Lately, there’s increasing concern about additional sea lions that have discovered a veritable buffet at the foot of Willamette Falls. Their appetites could doom Willamette River winter steelhead to extinction.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

SEATTLE TIMES: Congress must choose threatened salmon over sea lions

July 20, 2018 — State, federal and local governments have spent too much time and money restoring fish runs in the Columbia River Basin to let those efforts go to waste.

The U.S. House recognized this reality last month by passing legislation to make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on threatened salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Now, the Senate must step up and push the bill through to the finish line.

Northwest senators must be unified in their support for this common-sense measure, which aims to safeguard the billions of dollars invested in preserving fish that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Regional spending to protect and restore salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin easily tops $500 million every two years, according to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. That estimate doesn’t include the additional millions spent annually by federal wildlife officials, the state of Oregon, local governments and tribes.

But a few hundred hungry sea lions that have made their way upstream are putting those investments in jeopardy. Federal researchers estimated that a quarter of last year’s spring Chinook inexplicably disappeared on their way from the mouth of the Columbia River to Bonneville Dam, with sea lion predation most likely to blame.

Read the full opinion piece at the Seattle Times