They exist.

Interesting thing about the ESA is that it seems to work very well to recover some species, while other species continue to trend (albeit at a slower pace) toward extinction. Seals and ESA-listed salmon demonstrate both extremes. Both share similar habitats (in the salt, anyway) and depend on similar food sources, so why has one been so much more successful at recovery? I'm sure the whole story's nowhere near this simple, but I think the fact that we don't have a commercial market for seals might be a good place to start looking for answers.

I guess I'm naive, but I can't help wondering if salmon would be in better shape if we quit killing over half of them every year in the ocean. Hey - not killing them sure worked for the seals....

See alot of parallels to the spotted owl ESA listing, they finally concluded that habitat was not the limiting factor and the predation and competition from Barred Owls was, end resulting reducing the number of barred owls, increases the number of spotted.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...pecies-science/

The reason the Barred Owl invaded was because of changes in habitat. Once it got here, in the degraded and second-growth, it kept expanding and then hybridized the Spotteds.

Same as when you put rainbow on top of cutthroat, even in a rather pristine place like Yellowstone. The rainbow outcompeted and out-bred them.

The difference is a very large number of species prey on salmon at their varying life stages and exactly zero species prey on seals. Some killer whales obviously eat seals, but the pods that do so are rarely, if ever, in Puget Sound or the southern Strait of Georgia that they have no measurable impact on the harbor seal population.

Seal population growth is regulated only by the abundance of their prey. This said, once people stopped smoking seals indiscriminately out of fear of federal court, there was nothing stopping seal population growth. After talking to old timer anglers, commercial fishermen and Indians, I came to realize just how many seals got shot on a regular basis decades ago. This simply doesn't happen anymore, at least not at a rate that impacts growth.

In regards to not killing 50% of fish before they can spawn: we no longer kill any more than a negligible number (and in some cases zero) of wild steelhead yet steelhead populations in Puget Sound are not experiencing growth or are still declining. If the abundance of spawners does not influence overall population size, then there are other factors limiting population abundance and this could be true for coho and chinook. This is similar to putting $4,500 into your savings account with a 0.05% interest rate and getting disappointed that it's not making you any money.

Every year more information comes out just how massive the impacts seals are having on salmon and steelhead. These impacts are not just on returning adults, but are also on juvenile chinook, coho and steelhead at astounding numbers.

I'd wager within 10 years, there will be public debates on the "ethical" number of seals to be culled.

Hmmm, I seem to recall that they talked and talked before taking even minimal actions to respond to "Hershel" and his buddies only to find it was way too little and way, way too late for wild Lake WA steelhead.

History has a way of repeating itself.

As I recall, the LW steelhead rebounded after action was taken on the sealions and then went ito the tailspin from which it has not recovered.

If that had happened I believe the managers would have run it up the public flagpole given the amount of negative press resulting from the "Herschel" debacle.

At the time I was living near the WDFW facility where "Herschel" was sent (sea lion purgatory?) and remember how he escaped into the neighborhood.

Bigg's killer whales eat seals (and other mammals) and have been increasing quite a bit in the Salish Sea in recent years as the harbor seal population has increased. It would be interesting to see what data there are on what kind of impact they may be having on the seal population.