House OKs Lethal Sea Lion Removal

The US House of Representatives passed a bill today that allows for the lethal removal of California sea lions that eat ESA salmon and steelhead.

Still has to pass the Senate, and run the gauntlet of animal rights groups that I'm sure are lining up to sue, but it's an encouraging sign.

Too bad cold blooded animals with scales that live under water don't get the same attention from the PETA types as the cute furry ones do.

Fish on...

Todd

PETA has actually tried to gin up support for fish. Called them Sea Kittens.

The ol' eyelash rule. If it has eyelashes, it's cute. If it doesn't, it's dead. "Save the Whales" is the lone exception to the rule.

They should give all CSL harvest rights to the tribes. PETA types would then have a moral & ethical dilemma. That could help get enough votes to it pass through...IDK?

Great! Now we can remove sea lions at a cost of 1 million each.

Although I doubt one could ever convince PETA that it is OK to harvest animals, I think there would be more support for harvest if the animals were more or less fully consumed and not just "floated".

Change the dialog to pinnipeds vs. Orca and the adverse impact of pinnipeds on Chinook takes a different tone although still with controversy.

Here is a link to an article regarding the magnitude of pinniped predation on Puget Sound Chinook: http://www.cbbulletin.com/439144.aspx. That link includes a link to the actual article which is extremely detailed but the abstract paints a pretty clear picture.

Even with that information and the Governor's creation of an Orca emergency Task Force the Task Force's Prey Working Group seems unable to include a pinniped culling recommendation to the Task Force as a possible course of action. That observation comes after sitting through the Prey Working Group's meeting in Ridgefield on Monday.

My assessment based upon the numbers is that reduction of pinniped numbers in Puget Sound is the shortest/quickest path to increasing adequate Chinook for Orcas.

Pinnipeds really do need to be controlled but it has to be framed and practiced so that every saved salmon goes to Killer Whales. Every one, no increase in marine harvest at all. Once the salmon have physically passed through the whale feeding area they can be harvested.

I am cynical enough to believe that any salmon saved by culling pinnipeds will go to fisheries.

We all agree the answer to fisheries, orcas, ESA , and other related problems is mulit-faceted. What are you thoughts about food source?

We hear about the blob, ocean conditions, things we maybe can't control or will take years to fixed. I've thought of curtailing herring harvest. I know commercial only takes a small percentage, but maximizing food source is key for all aspects.

If an orca eats all 6 pound fish now, but with better food source (herring populations) we get that salmon to 7 pounds, that orca's diet (in pounds/calories) just went up 16%. Sure, some fish migrate, but bigger local stocks (blackmouth) and more food all the way around can't hurt the issues.
If we have ore salmon from pinniped reduction, hatchery production, and areas closed to harvest, what are those fish going to eat?

Or is this insignificant?

A substantial portion of the harbor seals' annual food demands is met by forage fish. Reduce the number of harbor seals and you increase both the availability of forage fish to salmonids as well as reduce the huge loss of Chinook smolt to those same predators. And by reducing that predatory impact it makes efforts to increase Chinook production obtain a bigger bang for the buck. Yes, there is always a concern as to how more returning fish will be managed but that is a somewhat different problem which will only become a factor if we can obtain a significant increase in returning Chinook.

It was beyond frustrating to sit through the Predation group's (a sub-group to the Prey Working Group) and listen to all of the reasons to not recommend some level of culling to the Task Force. There is a clear biological potential to achieve more Chinook for Orcas through culling pinniped populations. I will opine that the goal of providing adequate food for SRKW simply cannot be achieved without reducing the pinniped population within Puget Sound. The question is whether the policy makers and the public are willing to accept what needs to be done.

I think, but haven't read the bill so might be wrong, that the bill is aimed at the sea lions in the Columbia that feast at the dams. This will do absolutely nothing for the whales as the salmon will have already safely made it past the whales.

I think you're right. We can cull sea lions, but not seals. No win for SRKW or Puget Sound fisheries here. Just a win for fish harvesters in the Columbia (and, lest I forget, it should help get a few more wild spawners upstream). These are good things, but I dare say Puget Sound is a good deal more troubled than the Columbia, which begs the question of why we aren't doing anything to help Puget Sound.

I believe at least one important answer is that the Columbia still hosts commercial fisheries for Chinook, where Puget Sound does not. Ever notice the only political forces strong enough to move our courts to act on fish issues (tribal or non) are those with commercial fishing interests? I'm starting to think that might not be just a coincidence.

OH... Larry said culling pinnipeds is the quickest, easiest way to provide the SRKW with more salmon to eat. If politics are considered in that equation (co-management complicates just about anything we try to do for the Sound), he's probably right about that.

Remove the political BS, and a far cheaper, far easier alternative becomes available:

CUT BACK ON OPEN OCEAN FISHERIES IN ALASKA AND BC!... And maybe cull a few thousand seals, too.

Just sayin'.

Yup. I learned about that from one of PP's own, who goes/went? By the handle "GutZ." I fished with him a couple times in Area 9 a couple years back. He got such a kick out of that campaign that he named his boat the "Sea Kitten."

Anyone heard from Jeff recently? I know he had kidney issues, and that we haven't heard from him on here in a while has me fearing the worst.

For the proposed law I started this thread about the California sea lions we are talking about here are those in the Columbia that eat ESA salmon and steelhead, as noted in my opening post.

Discussions about Puget Sound pinnipeds is a completely other issue.

Fish on...

Todd

There really isn't a Silver Bullet. From my point of view the fastest was to get more spawners back in the rivers is to stop killing them:

End marine mixed stock fisheries
Significantly reduce all marine fisheries that harvest species that are eaten by salmonids
Reduce pinnipeds. Apparently they eat both smolts and adults, need to preserve both.
Significantly increase hatchery production of Chinook in situations where the fish can be harvested on return while avoiding wilds (eg Minter Creek, Coulter Creek) or choose to blow away the wild stock in the river (Green, Skokomish). Triage, it is either/or.

Those are the two short-term actions that get the fastest response. Because of demographic considerations these may be the only options that will save SRKW.

Set a fixed schedule for barrier removal. With rather steep penalties for non-compliance.
Set specific watershed conditions (human population, water removals, annual logging removals, road stabilization/removal, etc.) again with specific penalties.

Perhaps the penalty should be that the God Squad removes all species in that watershed from consideration under ESA.

Decisions have to be forced, actions have to have consequences. We have to stop kicking the can down the road.

One thing that was reinforced on Monday was that two pods of SRKW actively feed off the mid to southern WA coast in late winter/spring apparently targeting CR bound salmon so there is a potential for augmenting the food supply for those pods by improving salmon runs - natural origin as well as hatchery. And then there is the impact of predatory mammals and birds on outbound smolt.

Bottom line, Congress needs to provide more general management options under the MMPA to include prioritizing recovery of ESA listed species over the interests of healthy pinnipeds otherwise untouchable under the MMPA.

As to my comment about reducing pinnipeds as being the quickest and easiest way to provide SRKW more salmon.......well, that is my opinion but would require that all of the politicians who have recently jumped on board Orca recovery being willing to lean forward to overcome bureaucratic hurdles in the face of what they describe as an Orca emergency. Or are they just posturing for the votes??

Not sure, Larry, but I bet you're not far off with the votes thing. In today's society, if you take a stand on any issue, you immediately lose about half the electorate's support.

Lots of lip service being paid but do they have the spine to make the hard decisions? It should be clear that I have grave concerns/doubts that they have what it takes. It should also be clear that NOAA/NMFS has been remiss (at the least) w/r/t the impact of the MMPA on recovery of Puget Sound ESA listed Chinook and, correspondingly, Orca recovery.

Here is the link to the published results of the study of pinniped predation on P.S. Chinook: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0203#.WzPjMadKgdV.

And here is the Abstract:

"ABSTRACT
Conflicts can arise when the recovery of one protected species limits the recovery of another through competition or predation. The recovery of many marine mammal populations on the west coast of the United States has been viewed as a success; however, within Puget Sound in Washington State, the increased abundance of three protected pinniped species may be adversely affecting the recovery of threatened Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and endangered killer whales (Orcinus orca) within the region. Between 1970 and 2015, we estimate that the annual biomass of Chinook salmon consumed by pinnipeds has increased from 68 to 625 metric tons. Converting juvenile Chinook salmon into adult equivalents, we found that by 2015, pinnipeds consumed double that of resident killer whales and six times greater than the combined commercial and recreational catches. We demonstrate the importance of interspecific interactions when evaluating species recovery. As more protected species respond positively to recovery efforts, managers should attempt to evaluate tradeoffs between these recovery efforts and the unintended ecosystem consequences of predation and competition on other protected species."

Even if this report is only reasonably close in terms of numbers the impact is huge. Reduce the pinniped population in half and that should provide what the Orca need - all other factors remaining the same.

Edit: The Columbia Basin article to which I provided a link also included the following:

"Chasco said the authors, as well as other scientists from Oregon to Alaska, are “very close to submitting a study that applies this method to the eight spatial boxes on the west coast, and the Columbia River is one of them.”"

So while this thread has morphed a bit we should expect something fairly soon directly tied to pinniped impacts on the CR. Stand by Todd, it is supposedly coming.....

Eyelashes will win out. In some ways, the whole deck is stacked against the whales and salmon.

Alaska responds to nobody but themselves. Too much Congressional power to budge them.
Canada will hammer the lower 48 because they have no way to hit AK.
Tribes have Treaty rights to dead fish in the boat. And besides, fishing is not the problem.
WA is either broke or owes so much for (Education, mental health, homeless, transportation, culverts) that they will do nothing new.
Too expensive to clean up wastewater.

Which takes us back to "better to look good than be good."

An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance

Damn cynicism seems to be contagious!

That was one of Murphy's Laws that was on a poster in the office.

Another concern I have about the pinniped predation on salmon is temporal and spatial. Temporally, they (Harbor seals, I think) take a lot of smolts. Removing them saves smolts, for 3,4,5 years down the road; assuming that marine survival and our extremely conservative marine managers allow the additional smolts to survive to return.

Most of the predation by adult pinnipeds that at least makes the news is after the fish have passed the SRKW. Such as Ballard Locks and the Columbia. So, killing these pinnipeds benefits the SRKW if the surviving adults are allowed to spawn and all that additional production is allowed to return to the SRKW. This action has an additional year of waiting for benefits above letting the smolts go.

This is faster than habitat fixes but still lets the SRKW continue to auger in.

During that most recent Prey Working Group session the WDFW's expert on pinnipeds (and harbor seals in particular) Jeffries opined that any effort to reduce harbor seal populations would need to be broadly based spatially rather than focused just around choke points/river mouths. That seemed rather counter intuitive to me but he is the expert. Anyway, if that were to occur it could reduce impacts on returning adult Chinook beginning in the Straits with cumulative "saving" increases the surviving Chinook move further toward natal streams.

Edit: A big bull Orca and six or seven cows/calves made the turn around Possession headed north toward Everett on Friday evening. Pretty cool.

When you consider the size difference between the whales and seals it will take a lot of removals to feed one whale. Just using made-up numbers, if a whale eats 10 salmon a day and a seal 1, then 10 seals need removal (and no additional fishery removals) to feed one whale. That would mean remove 700 pinnipeds for the whales alone. Annually, until the salmon numbers rebound enough to feed the whales and pinnipeds.

Removals of the pinnipeds need some serious analysis, as you noted, of the where, when, and how many. I still think that the whole push in the Columbia is for fishermen and not whales as the salmon have already bypassed the whales before hitting the river. But, whales get more sympathy than fisher people.

Your number of 700 harbor seals would be approximately 5% of the total population within Puget Sound. I have read some numbers for the amount of salmon a SRKW requires on a daily basis and also a "goal" for increased availability but I do not recall a net increase number per SRKW. That is, how many more Chinook does each SRKW require over and above what they are currently able to find and eat in order to meet their needs?

Back to the recent Canadian publication which as I recall indicated that harbor seals consume (adjusted to adult equivalents) what the Orcas require (presumably in total).

All other factors remaining the same how many pinnipeds would need to be removed to provide for the Orcas? What is extremely frustrating to me having attended the Prey Working Group meetings is the seeming unwillingness to incorporate some level of pinniped removal; both immediate and ongoing.

Can the goal of adequately feeding the Orcas be achieved without pinniped management?

The short answer, Larry, is no. The long answer is no. But, at the same time, the marine mixed stock harvests of salmon need to be cut way back.

IF we want to have have SRKW we first need to define the size of population. Then, calculate the food needs on an annual basis. Then figure how to get from where we are now to there. This analysis would also include insuring that the SRKW food has sufficient food for itself. Ecosystem analysis.

At that point, we can see where we are, where we need to get, and how to get there. At which point we can decide if we want to do that or not.

Most of the time I see harbor seals, they are feeding on herring or squid. Since these are also food for Salmon and other larger fish, I would think there would be an additional benefit to the ecosystem overall, and could help return higher numbers of salmon than just the benefits from just the effect of less predation.

The problem is that the ecosystem is so interconnected. The salmon numbers are down because of over harvest, habitat destruction, and (now) lack of food in some parts of the ocean. Chinook and coho are "suffering because of increased pinks. Not to mention climate changes.

Killing the seals will allow them to increase, which might benefit if they have sufficient food. If not, no benefit. They might come back in bigger numbers have crappy places to spawn. No benefit.

The seals may be also eating something else that is keeping a lid on, say, Humboldt Squid.

We too often manage in what are called silos, bunkers made of very strong concrete that resist the penetration of new ideas.

We need to understand that removal of the seals will "fix" one short term problem but is not dealing with the overall picture. Unfortunately, that is also why we do nothing because no one thing, other than removing 90-95% of earth's humans, will fix the problem.

Well stated Carcassman!

90-95% may be extreme. I think it would really help if we could select for stupidity and general tendency to do evil in the culling of humans. Granted, that only leaves about 30% left over (and I'm not sure if I'd make the cut), but that's less bleak than 5-10%.

Yeah, it may have been a bit excessive. But, how many humans lived in WA when the ecosystem was functioning full bore? It was before the commercial loggers arrived. And Ag. There is even evidence in some areas that Tribal harvests depressed local populations of game certainly and fish maybe.

https://www.king5.com/video/news/local/orcas-in-the-northwest-at-risk/281-8204233

...and harbor seals may be part of the problem.

Fish on...

Todd

Didn't take them long to pull that story. I can't find it anywhere on King 5 now.

Lol too much “real” for the softies, probably had people calling the paper crying.

What a hoot! The 404 error msg says they have their best investigative reporters on the search for the missing page. Waiting, waiting.....and waiting.

I learned that Seals are cute and cuddly. Sport fishermen train them by feeding them salmon by hand.
Glad they pulled it, he set a bad example.

I think he was trying to make a point which seemed to take away from the message. Anyway, I seriously doubt that was why the article just disappeared.

This morning's (Tacoma) News Tribune had an editorial on the Orca crisis and listed a number of contributory factors but somehow left out competition for food (AKA pinniped predation on salmonids).

So did the governor's task force.
http://nwsportsmanmag.com/orca-task-forc...seal-predation/

Believe me, the issue of lethal removal of some Puget Sound pinnipeds was a topic of sometimes heated discussion during meetings of the task force's Prey Working Group. Given the efforts by some members to obfuscate even including lethal removal as a potential tool I am not at all surprised (but am very disappointed) that they have apparently chosen to not give the task force a full tool box.