Sea Lion Hordes Bucking Ecosystem

To most, they are fascinating creatures, among the cutest and most playful in the sea.

To casual saltwater fishermen, they are usually welcome at first, but wear out their welcome in a hurry.

To serious fishermen, they are nuisances, and to anyone in the business of saltwater fishing, they are about as welcome as a 50-knot wind.

They are California sea lions, brazen dogs of the sea that are breeding out of control and running amok off our coast, threatening already embattled salmon and steelhead runs and wreaking havoc on fishermen who are helpless to stop them from stealing their catches, and landing operators who can only watch as the whiskered mammals devour their bait supplies.

Such is the prevailing attitude on the waterfront, anyway.

Estimates put the sea lion population off the California coast at about 200,000, with an additional 100,000 off Baja California. In 1972, when the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed, protecting all marine mammals from harassment of any kind, there were only about 30,000 sea lions.

Before then, they were hunted for use as dog food and for “trimmings,” or male genitals, which were dried and shipped to Asian markets where they were powdered and sold as an aphrodisiac.

Today, not only are there more of these savvy pinnipeds than there have been in several decades, they seem to be bolder than ever, almost as if they know they aren’t to be harmed by humans.

For fishermen engaged in, say, a fast-action barracuda bite, it is easy to detect the presence of sea lions, even if they aren’t visible. Someone will reel in only the head of a fish. After that, with every hookup the challenge is not so much with the game fish but getting it to the boat before the sea lions bite it in half.

“It continues to get worse because new generations of [sea lions] have learned from their older relatives that this is an easy way to make a living,” said Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California (SAC), which represents 23 landings and about 200 vessels from San Diego to Santa Barbara. “They have learned to watch for somebody to hook up, because they know that it makes for an easy meal.”

At the Coronado Islands just south of the border, long a popular spot for the San Diego fleet, skippers are afraid to even drop anchor because to the sea lions loitering on the rocks, the noise from the anchor serves as a dinner bell.

To anglers, who pay $20-$100 for a day of fishing, this can be a major frustration. But to landing operators, the problem doesn’t end there.

Sea lions, they say, have begun following the bait boats that net anchovies and sardines for the their fleets and, in some instances, wait for the crew to make a circular set around a school of bait, then leap over the cork floats and devour as much bait as they can before the nets close in on them. Then they dive back over the floats and swim away, all the fatter.

The live bait that does make it back to the harbor, where it is placed inside receivers surrounded by steel and nets within the steel, and sold to both commercial party boats and private boaters, is not safe, either.

The sea lions have learned to dive beneath the receivers and blow air bubbles that suffocate and float the anchovies and sardines, which then wash out through the holes in the netting and are promptly devoured.

Or they just power their way through the steel to get to the fish.

“I’ve got a 600-pound bull and a 700-pound bull just taking the wire and bending it so they can get into our nets,” said Russ Harmon, owner of Cisco Sportfishing in Oxnard. “They keep on hitting cages with noses, and after so many rams they will take one receiver and tear it apart and it releases the bait. It’s so bad, it’s incredible. I’ve got these nets protected with 16-gauge steel, but it isn’t enough.”

Harmon said he is losing $5,000 to $10,000 a year and that landing operators up and down the coast are suffering similar losses.

What’s being done?

Nothing in the way of knocking down sea lion populations, which is what some fishermen would like to see. What politician in his or her right mind is going to lead a movement to start killing these cute, puppy-faced pinnipeds?

Nobody knows how many sea lions there were historically in the waters off California, but biologists believe they have not yet peaked because their population is still increasing, by about 10% annually.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, responsible for monitoring marine mammals, has issued a report to Congress detailing some of the problems (harbor seals also are creating problems, primarily up north) and has written a series of recommendations for when the Marine Mammal Protection Act comes up for reauthorization in 1999.

Chief among recommendations is to implement a “site-specific management for California sea lions and harbor seals.”

As part of this plan, lethal removal of pinnipeds preying on salmon and steelhead that are listed or proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act would be allowed. Lethal removal would also be allowed as a last resort “in situations where California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals conflict with human activities, such as at fishery sites and marinas.”

Another recommendation is “to develop safe, effective nonlethal deterrents.”

To that end, work is already under way by a San Diego company, Pulsed Power Technologies, which recently received a federal grant. The company has patented an experimental unit that emits a high-energy ultrasonic pulse that, it is hoped, will keep sea lions away without affecting the fish.

“It’s the latest and the greatest device we’ve seen in a while,” said Doyle Hanan, a senior biologist with the Department of Fish and Game who will be involved in the testing of the device. “Very little has been done with deterrents. This is the first device that shows promise.”

The electronic pulse, a brief concussive wave of energy that affects the inner ears of mammals close enough to be affected, already has proved to be effective during testing with a bulky prototype in 1995.

“We tested it on two different occasions,” said Fletcher, who has been involved with the project from the beginning. “On one occasion, we had a great barracuda bite going. There were fish jumping all over the place and we were catching them on jigs and baits. And then these two big knotheads [sea lions] came and shut us down. We turned on the unit and they took off like scalded dogs. The fish stopped biting momentarily and two minutes later they came back and started feeding. But the sea lions never came back.

“The second time another boat was having the same problem with sea lions and we turned on the unit and the animals behind that boat took off too.”

That was with a 300-pound model. Pulsed Power will use the funding to develop a smaller, more practical model that will undergo a series of out-of-water tests, supervised by various fisheries experts, and will then be tested in the ocean on SAC boats to determine the possible short- and long-term effects on fish and other marine mammals, and to determine whether the sea lions will get used to it, as they have to “seal bombs” and other ineffective deterrent devices.

Eventually, it is hoped, 50- to 100-pound units--costing $500 to $700--will be available to skippers and landing operators alike. It is also hoped they can keep the sea lions and seals from the mouths of rivers where they ambush runs of salmon and steelhead.

When testing begins, though, it is sure to be controversial.

Said Dick Ayres, president of Pulsed Power Technologies, “The fur huggers [animal lovers] won’t be happy with anything that annoys marine mammals, but this is by far the most effective and least intrusive device that has come out.”

PHONE HOME

Steve Fisher, the board-sailor who set out alone from Marina del Rey three weeks ago in an attempt to become the first to windsurf from the West Coast to Hawaii, has not been heard from and nobody knows if he is dead or alive, or where he might be.

“I just got off the phone with his mother, trying to convince her not to call the Coast Guard,” says Jaiom Berger, Fisher’s friend who is trying to track Fisher’s progress. Fisher had hoped to use an avionics radio to contact pilots of westbound jets, who could then relay his position to the mainland.

Berger is hoping that Fisher, on an 18-foot custom-made board with a hollowed-out place to sleep, is either having trouble communicating or that he is merely not far enough along to want to report. Thanks to high-pressure systems here and off Hawaii, there has been no wind to speak of in more than a week.

“He’s the kind of guy who won’t want to call unless he’s gotten somewhere,” Berger says.