These aren't sea lion fossils I'm talking about...I'm talking about sea lions...and not in an inland sea, but in the Columbia River at Celilo Falls, and the Dalles, and Cascade Falls, too...
http://www.cbbulletin.com/Free/275102.aspxFeedback: Researching Columbia River’s Historic Sea Lion And Seal Populations
--- From Bill McMillan, Concrete, WA:
To the editor of the Columbia Basin Bulletin:
Today (May 9) I read your online Columbia Basin Bulletin about the Sea Lion Mystery and noted what is a common error regarding the historic distribution of seals and sea lions in the Columbia River.
Your article "Sea Lion Mystery: 'How Did The Animals Die And How Did The Doors Get Closed?'"
http://www.cbbulletin.com/Free/273912.aspx states:
"Preliminary data this year indicates 73 different California sea lions, and at least 17 Steller sea lions and two harbor seals, have visited the dam, located 146 river miles from the river's mouth at the Pacific Ocean. At least 38 of the California sea lions seen this year have been also been observed at the dam in previous years.
"The California sea lions, which rarely swam so far upstream historically, typically begin leaving the Columbia in May, bound for breeding grounds off the Southern California coast. It's theorized that big spring salmon runs to the Columbia early in the decade caught the marine mammals attention. Male sea lions forage up the coast between breeding seasons."
For the past 8 months I have been working with several other authors regarding what historic habitat conditions were in the Columbia River Basin above Bonneville Dam (including in Canada) at the time of 1800 and to similarly develop a more accurate history of what the distribution and numbers of salmon and steelhead were than has commonly been used for the past 20-25 years (11-16 million salmon and steelhead). I have been the author responsible for searching the historic literature regarding the earliest available Columbia River records. Of course, this has included a particularly thorough scrutiny of the Lewis and Clark expedition journals in 1805 and 1806, and those of David Thompson who was the first Euro-American to sight and travel the Upper Columbia River in 1809 that eventually included his travel to the mouth of the Columbia in 1811.
The Lewis and Clark expedition members who kept journals (3 others besides Lewis and Clark) were particularly struck by the large numbers of "sea otters" when they reached Celilo Falls in October of 1805. It was not until their winter at Fort Clatsop that they came to realize their misidentification of these animals, and in February of 1806 Lewis and Clark wanted to correct their records regarding what these "sea otters" actually were -- which they thereafter called "seals," and in one instance a "sea calf." The Indians they consulted with through the winter at Fort Clatsop had set them straight. They concluded these animals likely included several different "kinds," or what we would now call species, from these discussions with the Indians.
It is understandable that Lewis and Clark initially thought these animals were sea otters. These were the most valuable animals of the era that brought fantastic prices in China. American ships had begun to take part in the trade for them from the Indians in the 1790s. The Lewis and Clark expedition's purpose was to stake out America's claim to the land and to stimulate prospective pioneers to head for the West to find its economic opportunities. If sea otters were in the Columbia, these were vitally important to document for their opportunity. At Celilo Falls, The Dalles, at the Cascades of the Columbia (today's Cascade Locks), and at the entry of the Washougal River they saw particularly large concentrations of these mixed species of seal-like animals that undoubtedly included both California and Stellar's sea lions along with harbor seals, and very likely some northern fur seals as well whose historic distribution is now known to be much further south than once considered (to California).
For Lewis and Clark to be impressed by the abundance of an animal, which was remarked numerous times regarding the "seals" they saw (particularly so at Celilo Falls), it would have meant animals in the thousands. This is remembering that they had seen the herds of bison, the remarkable abundance of salmon, and waterfowl so numerous near their Vancouver encampment that they complained they could not sleep at night for all the noise. When they said "numerous" they meant it in a way we can now hardly imagine fish and wildlife. Not only did they see large numbers of these animals at these particular points of great abundance, but all along on their way downstream in the autumn of 1805, and once again on their upstream journey in March/April of 1806.
Several times in 1805 they shot these animals but each time they sank before they could recover them. Like for Audubon, this was the primary means for collection of animals from which to make detailed descriptions, which was another primary purpose of the expedition -- to collect and describe the flora and fauna. In February of 1806 they expressed their quiet frustration at not being able to better describe at least one of these "seals" for lack of collecting one.
During David Thompson's travel down the Mid- to Lower-Columbia, in July of 1811 he also initially encountered "seals" at Celilo Falls and was surprised by their abundance, there and elsewhere. At one point he and his men were quite amused by them.
In September of 1836, the naturalist John Kirk Townsend recorded in his journals: "We see great numbers of seals as we pass along. Immediately below the Dalles they are particularly abundant, being attracted thither by the vast shoals of salmon which seek the turbulent water of the river. We occasionally shoot one of them as he raises his dog-like head above the surface, but we make no use of them; they are only valuable for the large quantity of oil which they yield." He is describing here the area downstream of Celilo about 10 miles.
I have estimated from these consistently similar descriptions of "numerous" and "great numbers," that seals and sea lions in mixed presence cumulatively numbered 100 per mile with concentrations of 1,000s of them together at those points where salmon and steelhead were particularly concentrated. In all accounts they were the most numerous between The Dalles and Celilo Falls, which of course, is where the fish were most concentrated. That is 200 miles up the Columbia. Doing the math, 100/mile x 200 miles = 20,000 cumulative seals and sea lions. They were described in great numbers in October, November, February, March, April, July and September. It is apparent they were in the Columbia River virtually year around. I suspect that up until the great commercial fisheries began on the Columbia in the 1860s, that along with the salmon and steelhead collapses by the late 1870s and early 1880s, the seals and sea lions were largely eradicated as competitors. Until that time,
there may well have been mixed resident and migratory populations of these animals in the Columbia that likely included breeding areas near the Columbia River mouth for both seals and sea lions.
It is apparent from these histories that seals and sea lions were once extremely abundant in the Columbia River, may have eaten somewhere between 5-15 million salmon and steelhead annually (depending on how many fish they consumed or lethally injured per day), and yet there remained enough salmon and steelhead to supply the tribal fisheries throughout the Columbia Basin as well as the abundant populations of bears (grizzly and black), wolves, coyotes, cougars, bobcats, lynx, ospreys, eagles, mergansers, American dippers, cormorants, terns, loons, herons, and on and on, that all subsisted in part on differing life histories of salmon and steelhead within the Columbia Basin.
All of this, of course, demonstrates how low the commonly assumed estimate of 11-15 million historic salmon and steelhead that the Columbia River produced at the time of Lewis and Clark is. This is largely the reason for the development of a more accurate salmon and steelhead history for the Columbia Basin.
I simply wanted to bring this to your attention, long as it may be, to help dispel the continuing perpetuation of myths, commonly mistaken as science, that have not taken a good look at what the actual history provides. For one thing, common sense alone tells us that Bonneville Dam is not unique to the history of the Columbia River regarding the creation of a passage delay. The Columbia Basin was historically noted as particularly high gradient for such a large river which included continuous rapids and two particularly large falls on the mainstem -- Kettle and Celilo. However, Celilo was as far as the seals and sea lions got, and they targeted Celilo in immense numbers (likely Willamette Falls as well but no records early enough to estimate how many). We could only wish there were still 20,000 seals and sea lions in the Columbia. It would tell us that we once again had historic run sizes of salmon and steelhead (likely between 35-50 million, not 11-15 million) that human procreation and agricultural/industrial civilization, not animal predation, will never allow us to recover.
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