Wow. With all of the bs dumped on the "fishermen" for shooting the sea lions...isn't this interesting. The sealions were not shot. They died of heatstroke and got bloody fighting with each other!

Google sea lions, bonneville, heatstroke or here is a link:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/121082191574480.xml&coll=7

Oh...and they are saying..."someone" could have pulled the rope to spring the trap...suggesting that fishermen might still be blamed. Later in the article they say that the traps have had the doors close by themselves. Shame on the feds for suggesting that fishermen might still be responsible! Shame on the Oregon state officials. Shame on everyone who was too freakin fast to blame fishermen and who still are looking at "us" for their own mistakes.

When are they gonna learn that fishermen are more in touch with nature...than most people?

One last comment...the news put the story out. Gee thanks. This isn't going to be pasted all over the front page or make prime time news, like happened when you had some "fishermen" to blame. Golly gee...I kinda sound indignant, don't I?

WOW!!! Was there any word on if they were going to start trapping again? MY guess is they are NOT

PETA closed the doors!!!!!!.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Just a thought

No more trapping/shooting until next year. Sweet, huh? The problem hasn't changed, but there's no need to hurry. Good Grief!

They probably would have rather have been shot, heat exhaustion doesn't sound like a very good way to die to me.

Sounds to me like somebody is just trying to make us all feel better?

Like it could never happen. A boat a make its way to Bonneville in the middle of the night past Homeland security to shoot sea lions.

I can't spell coverup.

If this was the case then how come they don't kill each other (got bloody fighting with each other) down in Astoria sitting on the dock at the East Boat basin?

WTF?

I actually can spell this out. I have guppies in my fishtank, many of them have died. In the wild, guppies(sealions) can escape their foe, same as a guy in a fight.... they can run away. You have aggressive guppies(sealions) in an enclosure and they will fight to the death. It is a theory that is not far fetched to me. But, who knows a dude could have popped off some rounds.... i just don't see the reasoning in covering that up. Would really make no sense seeing as it was already implied that someone shot them.

Conspiracy theory...I Don't buy it. The Assassin lives!!!

Mf

brewer is with brother! MF i think this is work of a true navy seal.

actually this entire bonni sea lion story has turned into a royal joke!!! what ever the story is, reset the traps and try to repeat the the solution. as many time as possible. anyways they will soon migrate out. i am very bummed that the sniper story fell through. based on the fishing boards, it lit up like wild fahr!!! made for some fun posting. wriling up the soft lipped nacyfish was great.

There are some misconceptions. Sea lions can't take heat with all the blubber. They need to get into the water if they get hot. It is very understandable that wild sea lions would panic when caught and overheat.

There were no bullets.

It is what it is. Read the article if you want.

All fishermen have lost as a result of the mismanagment of this issue by the feds and the states involved. The salmon and sturgeon have lost. PETA has won.

We got erroneously blamed, and PETA wins. It just ain't funny. It is sad.

EM your joking right? "We got erroneously blamed,"


can anyone logically explain how the sportsmen got blamed in this fiasco? i have yet to hear one person put the blame on fisherman.

there is some serious tunnel vision going on.

Here ya go big mouth.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-05-06-sea-lions_N.htm

the key wordying here is "suspician" but i see how you guys got your manilla rope panties in a knot over it.

My friend, headlines are not tunnel vision. Fishermen were accused of shooting the sea lions in "headline news". You are right, we weren't accused by one person. We were accused by many: by the feds, by state officials, by the humane society. We were accused in the news papers, on tv, and on the net.

Fishermen suspected after 6 sea lions shot to death in Oregon, a headline

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-05-06-sea-lions_N.htm

My friend, it was healine news. That is anything but tunnel vision.

It took me 30 seconds to find that on google.


30 seconds more, cause I am so slow:

Fishermen suspected in shootings of sea lions...another headline...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24457199/

"Whoever did this knew what he was doing. This was a very bold and open act," Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said Tuesday (this comment in the body of the story).

The Humane Society of the United States has offered $5,000 for information leading to convictions, and the Tucson-based Animal Defense Council has put up $500. (also in the body of the story)

Some people need to get out and catch a fish around here.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

True enough. But I am capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, lol.

So what you are saying is that the State trapped them on Friday and were not going to transport them until Monday? Left them in a closed cage all weekend? The first reports were that the trap was left open so they could come and go. Every other trap on the Columbia ( tagging) is left open when not in use.

I still don't buy it. There more to the story

I read somewhere that the traps where known to close accidently. I think this is the part that is left out in all recent publications.

OK I found some:
It's still not known what caused the doors of the cage traps to close. They have been known to shut inadvertently, but Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the fisheries service, said it's unlikely the doors of two cages would accidentally close at the same time

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-sealions15-2008may16,0,6588276.story

He is denying that they closed at the same time? Who said they did. One closed 12 hours after the first!

Flame the Assoc. Press. They wrote the text that was in USA Today and all the other papers, that read:
"The California and Steller sea lions that were killed over the weekend were shot after they had crawled into the steel cages. Investigators think the killers used a boat to navigate the tricky waters, dropped the doors on two of the cages and opened fire from close range, perhaps cleaning up the spent shells to remove any evidence. The carcasses were found Sunday."

What a bunch of crap. Anything for a story.
_________________________
Don't forget to thank Brian for his work: ""Whoever did this knew what he was doing. This was a very bold and open act," Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said Tuesday.

Seems Brian should have said "We did this, and we have no idea what we're doing."

Bottom line: A $2 bullet would have been better all the way around. I'm not insensitive to the animals, but every time this comes around, it costs 1000 times more than it should, when that money could be allocated to starving people, disease, etc. Remember the fake orcas, trap pens, rubber arrows, at the locks 20 years ago?

ned love your reasoning .... why?.... well it makes total sense.

Heatstoke? I don't buy it.
The dams are the problem, consentrating the pinnipeds in one area. The ACoE is just out of touch with the reality of the situation IMHO.

No bullets my friend. No bullets.

They are dead.

No bullets.

They were not killed by fishermen.

They died of something.

The evidence says heatstroke. You don't have to believe it. The article I referenced at the start of this thread answers the questions posed here.

Why is it so hard to believe that the government is incompetent and that they blamed fishermen in general for their incompetence?

You don't buy it, I don't get it. Oh well.

Nope, I'm still not buying it.

Mf

Buying what? Read the article, all three pages. I know you haven't.

EM, i'm picking up on vibes. the vibes that you swing towards the tree hugging, bark humping area of the subject. my first clue was your moniker. after that things fell into place. who needs to read all three pages? the entire affair was huge joke! the punchline incase you missed it, the feds were letting go 99% of the seals caught. real effective huh? out of the 6 that died(thank god) only one was targeted to be removed. just think the other 5 would still be out there right now filling thier guts.

Dude you are so clueless.

I have never seen a sealion problem that I couldn't fix with a box of 180 grain 30-06 bullets.

What the hell do you think the point is here?

You should be indignant that the feds and the states involved have tried to blame "US" for their screwups, and that the "tree huggers" were using this against us.

You and I both know that by killing a few sea lions at bonneville we could establish a more healthy balance.

Point your emotions where it will do some good. I await your apology. Yeah...I know...when pigs fly. You don't mind if I bag some of them flying pigs with my 12 guage pump, do ya?

i'm sorry, i apologise.... your right, i'm wrong. i'm just a small guy of 5'9" buck 70 dripen wet. your scarying me..... i was only making conversation, geeez!

non sequitur

There have always been hundreds of sea lions in the Columbia River...hundreds, always...and this includes long, long before there were any dams.

They went all the way up to Celilo Falls...where just like at Bonneville, there were hundreds of sea lions and lots of salmon corked up trying to get past the falls.

The only thing that is different is that there is a remnant of fish compared to what was, and just like any other user group, the sea lions are fighting for their share of the crumbs...they're not doing anything different than they ever have, there just aren't hardly any fish left anymore...and that most certainly is not the fault of the sea lions.

Fish on...

Todd

you have a good point there.... but, i garuntee those seals back then were being harvested by the native people of the time. there wasn't alot of tree huggers back then blocking the progress of sealion carnage! plus there was a hundred million fish returning back then to. not the trinket returns we have today.

I'm sure you're right...but they didn't harvest them to protect salmon from them, they harvested 'em to eat...when there were millions of salmon around, it didn't matter too much who was eating how many...

Fish on...

Todd

All true Todd. Whether anything is done or not is a matter of philosophy. But since we have changed everthing; damming the river, fishing, population, polution...we are already changed everything from the past. We now have choices to make.

There are just consequences to those choices. Doing nothing and letting the sea lions eat samon and sturgeon is a choice. Trying to manage the consequences of an altered environment is a choice. The "plan" to control the sea lions was part of such a plan. Hatcheries are also part of a plan to deal with our current reality. Right or wrong, there are plenty of downsides no matter what choice is made.

I just didn't like the botched sea lion control plan being blamed on the fishing public.

i do know that the name for a river near by was called the seal river. thats the name the natives called it. later the whiteman renamed it the washougal.

I heard seals taste like chicken.

Mf

no MF, its a heavy pork flavor.... i've been getting some fresh stuff...

I would not agree with your points.

California Sea Lions have never been threatened or reduced in historic populations....and then...

Sea Lions were protected by the MMPA and have increased their population by about 2 1/2 times. In the mean time the ocean has been harvested down including food fish such as herring and sardines.

Sea lions learn and adapt well. In the past 8 years since Bonneville has been reopened to Spring Chinook fishing the concentration of Sea Lions has increased big time. Same goes for the falls at Oregon City on the Willamette. 10 years ago it was rare to see sea lions near the falls. Now there are at least a dozen there every day.

And BTW, next time you hear someone tell you there is fossil evidence of sea lions as far up as Celilo, remember that was an inland sea when those fossils were formed.

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.aspx

Feedback: 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.

thats a very interesting read, mostly fabricated i believe. what were lewis and clark smoking? calling 1000lb seals a river otters. otters go what? 40lbs drippen wet. huge difference in body wieght, plus seals have no tails.

You don't have to believe it, but I'll take eye witness accounts over someone who just says "I don't believe it" every day...pretty easy call to make, so far as I'm concerned.

Fish on...

Todd

todd just given you a yank! i like reading the journals of old. everytime i fish the columbia my imagination tries to picture the place back in its pre whiteman era. the true flows, celio falls and its thunderous roar, the 100# kings. its trully sad to see what we've done to it.

Back in the '90's when I was over at Gonzaga for law school the reservoirs got drawn down so much that the top portion of Celilo was actually whitewaer again...I didn't have a chance to go up and see it, but I saw it on the news and even though it was just a portion of the rapids, I can imagine it must have been a pretty awesome sight when it was fully going...

Fish on...

Todd