Changes allow more salmon-eating sea lions to be killed

Published: Monday, 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.

NOAA Fisheries made public reduced criteria for removing sea lions at Bonneville Dam about 145 miles 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-Fisheries 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%.

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.

Salmon and steelhead congregate near the bottom of the dam to go up fish ladders, facing some delays in "getting through the pinch points, and sea lions have figured that out," Anderson said.

The California sea lions at the dam are all males, with some 200 to 300 showing up and numbers typically peaking in the spring.

They're bulking up on salmon, with some sea lions reaching 1,000 pounds, before swimming roughly 800 miles to breeding beaches at the Channel Islands off the California coast. Once there they try to establish territories, not eating for a month while mating with females in their area of control and fighting off rival males.

"It's kind of classic biology," Anderson said. "Get as big as you can to try to be successful." — Keith Ridler, Associated Press

Now we need to get them engaged on the impacts of pinnipeds on Puget Sound fisheries with an emphasis on Chinook.

Bonneville success statistics can only help, and maybe extrapolated to rivers and spawning basins.
Anyone have a head-count on pinnipeds in Puget Sound? Who's leading that effort (my guess is, it's not INSLEE!)

From 1972 into the 1980s, harbor seal stocks grew exponentially at a rate of
about 6% per year. Since the mid-1990s, the Salish Sea population seems to
have reached carrying capacity and has remained relatively stable (DFO 2010,
Jeffries et al. 2003). The inland Washington harbor seal stock is estimated to be
over 12,000 (Carretta et al. 2013), while the Strait of Georgia sustains
approximately 39,000 harbor seals (Olesiuk 2010). Combining those figures, the
total population of harbor seals in the Salish Sea is over 50,000. The Salish Sea
covers 16,925 square kilometers of marine water (Gaydos et al. 2008), making
the harbor seal density of almost 3 harbor seals per square kilometer of ocean
possibly one of the most dense harbor seal populations in the world.

https://www.eopugetsound.org/articles/harbor-seal-species-profile

Jeffries' conclusion then about Inland (Puget Sound) harbor seals having reached carrying capacity at over 12,000 animals was apparently quite premature or simply erroneous. The recent WDFW Staff presentation to the Commission put the three year average (2013-2015) number at 19,000 animals with an estimated 2016 consumption of over 12,000,000 Chinook out migrating smolt. Here is the link to that presentation:
https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...esentation.pdf.

I have to wonder if there is any doubt now about the Salish Sea having the most dense harbor seal population in the world. By the way Jeffries still works for WDFW to include harbor seal monitoring.

Thanks to both of you for that data....I've been meaning to look it up. Not only are they eating smolts, but appear to have eaten all the rockfish in 7N....Saw 100's the other day out ling fishing. Tom

Pinniped predation on rockfish certainly does have a significant adverse impact on efforts to recover the two ESA listed rockfish species.

During the development of the WDFW's rockfish recovery plan it was a battle to get them to acknowledge that fact and to recognize it in their recovery plan.

Not to take this too far sideways WDFW said that Boccaccio and Yellloweye were in water too deep for seals. Later they wanted to have MPAs and RCAs to include all the way to the shoreline because the young of those two species occupy that shallow water. So much for not being available to seals and it doesn't take much loss of the young to prevent recovery.

Thanks for reminding me that it is not just Chinook and Orcas.