Saving Seafood

Salmon-eating sea lions targeted at Columbia River dam

May 6, 2019 — More California sea lions preying on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River below a hydroelectric project on the Oregon-Washington border are being killed under a revised policy, federal authorities said Friday.

The National Marine Fisheries Service made public reduced criteria for removing sea lions at Bonneville Dam about 145 miles (235 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean.

The new guidelines that went into effect April 17 permit any California sea lion seen in the area on five occasions or seen eating a fish to be put on a list for lethal removal.

The former criteria required both those marks to be met. Officials say 10 sea lions have been killed so far this year, most as a result of the policy change.

Robert Anderson, the agency’s marine mammal program manager, said the Pinniped-Fishery Interaction Task Force decided to make the change after dissatisfaction with current efforts. A study found the change could increase the number of sea lions killed by 66 percent.

Officials are authorized to remove 92 California sea lions annually from the area, but have never come close to that number. Meanwhile, billions of dollars have been spent in Idaho, Oregon and Washington to save 13 species of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Groups Lobby Judge for Immediate Fixes to Salmon-Killing Dams

April 5, 2019 — Environmental groups urged a judge to order immediate changes to the government’s operation of a series of dams in the upper Willamette River basin, saying steelhead and Chinook salmon are too imperiled to risk waiting for litigation over dam operations to play out.

The Army Corps of Engineers operates a series of 13 dams in the upper Willamette River and its tributaries. The dams provide flood control, produce electricity and store water for irrigation and for the city of Salem, Oregon. The dams are also the main cause of the precipitous decline of upper Willamette steelhead and Chinook salmon.

But the government hasn’t acted to protect fish, environmental groups say.

In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion finding that the dams were decimating the protected fish by killing the majority of young salmon and steelhead as they make their way past the dams toward the ocean. The dams also torpedo water quality by raising water temperature to deadly levels and force young fish to cross reservoirs filled with predators and parasites.

In its biological opinion, National Marine Fisheries Service said the Corps could continue to operate the dams while reducing impacts to fish if it immediately implemented a slew of measures to improve fish passage and water quality.

But the Corps didn’t do that, and fish populations continued to decline.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Idaho Plan Safeguards Wild Steelehead, Per NOAA

March 22, 2019 — NOAA Fisheries has determined that Idaho’s Fishery Management and Evaluation Plan for their recreational steelhead fishery provides necessary protections for salmon and steelhead listed under the ESA.

NOAA Fisheries has determined that Idaho’s Fishery Management and Evaluation Plan (FMEP) for their recreational steelhead fishery provides necessary protections for salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). NOAA fisheries has approved Idaho’s plan under section 4(d) Rule.

Under section 4(d), NOAA Fisheries can specify how an activity can be exempt from additional ESA regulations. This applies particularly to “take,” which can include any act that kills or injures fish, and may include habitat modification. The ESA prohibits any take of species listed as endangered, but some take of threatened species that does not interfere with survival and recovery may be allowed.

“Idaho has developed a plan that provides continuing recreational fishing opportunities while ensuring that ESA-listed salmon and steelhead have the protection they need to recover,” said Allyson Purcell, Branch Chief in NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region.

Idaho’s plan came together through collaboration with fishery managers across the Snake River Basin and includes a new basin-wide framework designed to limit total impacts on steelhead from all fisheries in the Snake River Basin. Under Idaho’s plan, fishermen will continue to be required to release any wild steelhead they encounter.

Read the full story at the Fishing Wire

Few California sea lions from Willamette Falls euthanized, but program continues

February 15, 2019 — Only five California sea lions have been trapped at Willamette Falls and killed since the state received permission to launch the program to protect threatened winter steelhead and spring Chinook salmon.

The permit is for 93.

It was issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service after nonlethal methods, like relocating the mammals to the Oregon Coast, failed.

The sea lions simply swam back.

Euthanasia continues to be debated by advocacy groups and scientists alike, but the dire situation for the fish rarely is.

Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey past Willamette Falls, according to state counts. Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000.

Read the full story at the Salem Statesman Journal

Killing Sea Lions to Save Salmon

January 31, 2019 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by The Atlantic:

Let us first establish that sea lions are supposed to live in the sea.

Since the 1990s, however, male sea lions—a handful at first, now dozens—have been captivated by the attractions of the Willamette River. They travel all the way from Southern California to Oregon and then swim up 100 miles of river to arrive at an expansive waterfall, the largest in the region. Here, salmon returning to spawn have to make an exhausting journey up the fish ladders of the Willamette Falls. And here, the sea lions have found a veritable feast.

“[They’re kind of sitting ducks,” the wildlife biologist Sheanna Steingass told me, describing the salmon. She paused to consider the metaphor. “Or sitting fish.” Every sea lion eats three to five fish a day.

In another world, this could just be a story about the intelligence of sea lions and their adaptability to river life. But in this world—where salmon populations throughout North America have plummeted, and where the winter steelhead run at Willamette Falls has fallen from 25,000 fish in the 1970s to just hundreds in 2018—it’s a dire story for the fish. After spending years trying and failing to deter the sea lions by nonlethal means, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, where Steingass leads the marine-mammal program, started “lethal removal” of sea lions in December. As of mid-January, they have trapped and euthanized five sea lions at Willamette Falls.

Killing animals to save other animals is always controversial. Animal-rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States denounced the sea-lion killings, calling them a distraction from the salmon’s real problems. And it’s true that a long chain of human actions—overfishing, destruction of salmon habitats, dams blocking their migration, hatchery mistakes—have led to what everyone can admit is this nonoptimal situation.

“In a perfect world, in an unaltered world, this wasn’t a problem, because historically there were 16 million salmon in the Columbia River,” says Doug Hatch, a senior fisheries scientist at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The sea lion’s appetites would have barely made a dent. It’s only because humans have so unbalanced the natural world that as drastic an action as culling sea lions could appear to be the fix.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

Salmon-eating sea lions can now be killed legally

January 30, 2019 — Sea lions off the coast of California are being penalized for eating salmon — and it’s completely legal.

A new law allows for the killing of sea lions that have been feasting on the region’s endangered salmon, causing their numbers to drop. But hunters need to first get a permit.

The Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act was signed into law on Dec. 18, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Many salmon and steelhead populations in the Northwest are threatened and endangered, and the last few years have been particularly hard as ocean conditions have turned and fewer salmon have returned to the rivers,” NOAA spokesman Michael Milstein told CNN.

Read the full story at the New York Daily News

 

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

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

 

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

 

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.