Twenty years ago, Herschel and his pals nearly wiped out the steelhead runs at Seattle’s Ballard Locks. The chunky California sea lions killed two-thirds of the winter steelhead at the waterway linking Puget Sound with Lakes Union and Washington, and even today, that run has not fully recovered.
Sea lions are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. When Sen. Warren G. Magnuson authored the law, Herschel and his hungry friends were few in numbers. But since the federal law passed, seal and sea lion populations have exploded. For example, the Washington Fish and Game Dept. estimated the California sea lion population on the West Coast grew from 10,000 in 1950 to over 300,000 by 2005.
Section 120 of the Act does allow taking sea lions by lethal force on an individual basis if they threaten endangered fish runs. However, by the time authorities had permission to remove five animals near the locks, 12 years had passed and Herschel was long gone. Three chubby replacements — Hondo, Bob and Big Frank — were captured in 1996 and flown to Sea World in Orlando, a place where they have at least three square meals a day.
Sea lions are smart. They nearly drove fish and game officials crazy. The experts tried just about everything to scare hefty predators away from the Ballard Locks and even came up with a “Fake Willy,” a 16-foot fiberglass killer whale. All that happened is the paint got scratched up and the sea lions swam right by bogus Orca to feast on the incoming runs.
Scientists even captured the biggest offenders and trucked them to California, but Herschel and his buddies nearly beat the trucks back to Seattle and continued to “chow away.”
Eventually, the sea lions left Seattle because the food ran out. The run of 2,500 steelhead had collapsed to as few as 70 fish. Other sea lions didn't take their place, but it wasn't because they feared capture, underwater noise-makers, or a fake whale. No food, no sea lions.
Fast forward to 2008, there are now hundreds of sea lions following the salmon and steelhead runs up the Columbia River. When the fish hit Bonneville Dam or natural barriers such as the Willamette Falls south of Portland, sea lions feast on salmon. Even if the dams were removed, the natural falls at Willamette and the old Celilo Falls on the Columbia at The Dalles would create a perfect buffet table for hungry sea lions, and the problem would persist.
In Seattle, there were a few pesky sea lions. Currently, over 270 have been identified in the vicinity of Bonneville Dam alone.
Since 2005, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers has been working with Oregon and Washington fisheries experts to reduce the number of fish eaten by sea lions. They’ve tried every trick in the book, but nothing has worked. In fact each year the sea lion population increases by five percent, and the animals are arriving earlier each year and staying longer.
In the meantime, they are swallowing as many as 13,000 returning salmon each spring in the Columbia River, nearly 3,000 a year at Bonneville Dam. Considering we are running into a cycle where returns are down, their voracious appetite is a real problem. For example, returning females carry 5,000 or more eggs, the next generation, but they need to make it back to their spawning grounds.
NOAA Fisheries Services, at the urging of fishermen and Columbia River tribes, wants permission to kill up to 30 sea lions before the runs are wiped out. So unless Sea World or someone else steps forward, either some troublemaker sea lions will have to go or the fish runs will end up like the winter steelhead run at the Ballard Locks.
Unfortunately, it is rapidly coming down to those hard choices.
