Saving Seafood

But Sea Lions Seem So Cute…

June 26, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the House Committee on Natural Resources: 

We’re seeing another busy week unfold for us at Nat. Resources this week, as the Rules Committee officially announced that a vote for H.R. 2083, the Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act, is set for tomorrow. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), the bipartisan bill provides states and tribes the necessary tools to humanely manage sea lions that have migrated outside their historic range and pose an imminent threat to fish species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

But Sea Lions Seem So Cute…

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Sea lions pose a significant threat to ESA-listed salmon and steelhead, and while the world took notice of last year’s viral sea lion attack, tribal, subsistence and commercial fisheries have long felt the effects of the hearty appetite of non-native sea lions across the Columbia River watershed. Endangered salmon have become the victims of conflicting federal laws that make it illegal to responsibly manage the obvious predator: sea lions.

Broad Member & Stakeholder Bipartisan Support

The bill enjoys a strong bipartisan backing, with U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) as an original cosponsor, and a significant list of local and regional groups voicing support, including the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, the Columbia Intertribal Fish Commission, the Coastal Conservation Associations of Washington and Oregon, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and more than 100 local and recreational fishing businesses.

Learn more about the House Committee on Natural Resources here.

 

Sea lion removal bill makes headway

June 25, 2018 — Legislation that would make it easier for fisheries managers to kill sea lions preying on salmon, steelhead and other species is picking up speed after years of languishing in Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on the Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Preservation Act sometime next week. The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Idaho Republican Jim Risch, picked up a key Democratic sponsor. Sen. Maria Cantwell signed on to the legislation, making it a bipartisan effort.

“We’ve been begging to get some bipartisan support on it,” said John Sandy, chief of staff for Risch. “Because where do we go if we don’t?”

The two senators, representing neighboring Northwest states that are both engaged in the decades-long effort to recover threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, issued a news release Friday highlighting the need for the bill that has been amended from an earlier version.

“Salmon consumption at 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.

Cantwell called salmon “central to our culture, our livelihoods and our economy in the Pacific Northwest.”

Sea lions feasting on salmon and other fish at places like Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and Willamette Falls on the Willamette River have been identified as one of the many threats facing protected salmon and steelhead runs. On the Willamette River, fisheries managers from Oregon say sea lion predation could cause a winter steelhead run to go extinct.

Read the full story at The Spokesman-Review

OREGON: One state’s plan to save a protected species is to kill another species

June 18, 2018 — For years, hundreds of California sea lions have colonized the docks in the Oregon port town of Astoria, their loafing brown bodies serving as both a tourist attraction and a nuisance begrudgingly tolerated by officials. Authorities have deployed deterrents — including beach balls, electrified mats and a mechanical orca — in futile attempts to scare off the pinnipeds without harming them, because they are protected under federal law.

But when it comes to sea lions that swim their way from the coast to inland rivers, Oregon officials are no longer feeling so indulgent. After years of nonlethal hazing efforts, the state wildlife agency is now seeking permission to kill them.

The sea lions are a target because of their voracious appetite for threatened and endangered fish. They gobble up so many winter steelhead at Willamette Falls, south of Portland, that state biologists say there’s a 90 percent chance the fish run will go extinct. If granted a special permit from the federal government, Oregon could trap and kill as many as 92 sea lions at the falls each year.

The conflict pits one protected species against another in an unusual battle that kill-plan proponents say is lopsided in favor of a thriving predator and that opponents say makes the species a scapegoat. Although hunting, bounties, habitat loss and pollutants caused the California sea lions’ population to drop below 90,000 in the 1970s, it has steadily risen since the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and now numbers nearly 300,000, or what the act calls “optimum sustainable population.” With the increase of the hulking animals has come tension over resources from beaches to fish.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Washington rep. hosts discussion on salmon, sea lion population management

May 31, 2018 — KALAMA, Wash. — As the sea lion population in the Columbia River goes up, so does the impact to the region’s fishing industry.

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., met with area fishing guides to talk about how to handle it.

Earlier this year, Herrera Beutler co-sponsored the bipartisan Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act with Oregon U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.

She said she’s still trying to get support for the legislation. The bill streamlines the process for state wildlife officials to manage the sea lion population.

Read the full story at KLEW

 

Oregon: Sea lions continue to eat endangered fish

May 29, 2018 — All the time, money and sacrifice to improve salmon and steelhead passage in the Willamette River won’t mean a thing unless wildlife managers can get rid of sea lions feasting on the fish at Willamette Falls.

That was the message Tuesday from Shaun Clements, senior policy adviser for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who met at the falls with Liz Hamilton, executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, and Suzanne Kunse, district director for U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.

The group watched as several sea lions patrolled the waterfalls and nearby fish ladders. Clements said there could be as many as 50-60 sea lions in the area on any given day in April or early May, and the animals are responsible for eating roughly 20 percent of this year’s already paltry winter steelhead run.

As of May 22, ODFW has counted just 2,086 winter steelhead at Willamette Falls. That’s less than half of the 10-year average and 22 percent of the 50-year average.

ODFW applied in October 2017 to kill sea lions from Willamette Falls under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, though Clements said he does not expect a decision from the National Marine Fisheries Service until the end of the year. The department also tried relocating 10 California sea lions to a beach south of Newport earlier this year, only to see the animals return in just six days.

Read the full story at the Capital Press

 

Senators Feinstein, Harris introduce bill to ban drift nets in California

April 30, 2018 — A bipartisan bill to ban controversial drift net fishing off California’s coast was introduced Thursday by Democratic California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, along with West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito.

The nets, which can be more than a mile long, are intended to catch swordfish but end up trapping dolphins, sea lions and a host of other marine life, many of which die.

“The use of drift nets to target swordfish harms too many endangered or protected marine animals and should be phased out,” Feinstein said in an emailed statement. “It’s unacceptable that a single California fishery that uses this type of drift net is killing more dolphins and porpoises than the rest of the West Coast combined.”

Large mesh drift nets are already banned in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, as well as off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii, according to Feinstein. Additionally, the United States is a signatory to international agreements that ban large drift nets in international waters.

Read the full story at the Orange County Register

 

Salmon survival: ‘We need more lethal removal of sea lions. Hazing is not the answer’

April 6, 2018 — Ted Walsey’s shotgun cracked like thunder, lobbing a cracker shell into the Columbia River and sending the big brown sea lion beneath the surface in search of friendlier waters. But the boat and the noises emanating from it weren’t far behind.

Just as crews from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission have for a number of years, Walsey, Bobby Begay and Reggie Sargeant patrolled the river just below Bonneville Dam on Wednesday afternoon, harassing but not killing sea lions with cracker shotgun shells and so-called seal bombs — both essentially big firecrackers, the former shot from a shotgun, the latter dropped by hand — downstream and away from the fish ladders, where endangered migratory salmon congregate.

For the salmon, it’s the first chokepoint on a long journey to their spawning grounds. For hungry sea lions, it’s like a quick trip to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division estimates about 45 percent of spring chinook salmon are lost between the mouth of the Columbia and Bonneville Dam, with sea lions being primarily responsible.

Sea lions — as well as whales, dolphins and porpoises — are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. For the last 15 years or so, states and tribes have been able to kill some sea lions, but they have to go through a long and laborious permitting process to do so on an animal-by-animal basis.

Read the full story at TDN

 

NOAA publishes global list of fisheries and their risks to marine mammals

April 3, 2018 — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published the first list of foreign fisheries, detailing the risks that commercial fishing around the world pose to marine mammals.

“The [List of Foreign Fisheries] is an important milestone because it provides the global community a view into the marine mammal bycatch levels of commercially relevant fisheries,” according to a statement published on the NOAA Fisheries website.

“In addition, it offers us a better understanding of the impacts of marine mammal bycatch, an improvement of tools and scientific approaches to mitigating those impacts, and establishes a new level of international cooperation in achieving these objectives,” the statement says.

The register is a step toward meeting specific requirements in the Marine Mammal Protection Act on the sources of fish imported into the U.S. It includes nearly 4,000 fisheries across some 135 countries. These fisheries have until 2022 to demonstrate that the methods they use to catch fish, as well as other marine animals such as coral, crabs, lobsters and shellfish, either aren’t much of a danger to marine mammals, or they employ comparable methods and mitigation measures to similar operations in the United States.

Fishing nets can exact a high toll on animals that fishers don’t intend to catch. Nets themselves can trap dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions as bycatch. In Mexico, a fishery targeting the totoaba for its swim bladders that fetch high prices in Asian markets has decimated the tiny porpoise known as the vaquita (Phocoena sinus). Perhaps as few as 12 remain in the wild.

The lines from traps, pots and nets can also ensnare even the largest animals in the ocean. Recent research has shown that almost every one of the estimated remaining 451 North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) either is toting errant fishing equipment around or it bears the scars of entanglements with gear. These ropes can cause injuries to right whales and other animals that can lead to infection or death. And towing pieces of gear that can be longer than the whale’s body causes what scientists call “parasitic” drag that can interfere with the ability to find food.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

Species battle pits protected sea lions against fragile fish

March 23, 2018 — The 700-pound sea lion blinked in the sun, sniffed the sea air and then lazily shifted to the edge of the truck bed and plopped onto the beach below.

Freed from the cage that carried him to the ocean, the massive marine mammal shuffled into the surf, looked left, looked right and then started swimming north as a collective groan went up from wildlife officials who watched from the shore.

After two days spent trapping and relocating the animal designated #U253, he was headed back to where he started — an Oregon river 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean that has become an all-you-can-eat fish buffet for hungry sea lions.

“I think he’s saying, ‘Ah, crap! I’ve got to swim all the way back?'” said Bryan Wright, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist.

It’s a frustrating dance between California sea lions and Oregon wildlife managers that’s become all too familiar in recent months. The state is trying to evict dozens of the federally protected animals from an inland river where they feast on salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The bizarre survival war has intensified recently as the sea lion population rebounds and fish populations decline in the Pacific Northwest.

The sea lions breed each summer off Southern California and northern Mexico, then the males cruise up the Pacific Coast to forage. Hunted for their thick fur, the mammals’ numbers dropped dramatically but have rebounded from 30,000 in the late 1960s to about 300,000 today due to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

 

Sea lions keep eating the Northwest’s endangered fish

March 22, 2018 — NEWPORT, Ore. — Two species of fish listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act are facing a growing challenge in Oregon from hungry sea lions.

The federally protected California sea lions are traveling into the Columbia River and its tributaries to snack on fragile fish populations.

After a decade killing the hungriest sea lions in one area, wildlife officials now want to do so at Willamette Falls, a waterfall in the Willamette River about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Portland.

The falls represent a new battleground in a bizarre survival war between fish and sea lions in the Pacific Northwest.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Post