Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

The obligation of the Port is to protect the publicly owned docks, he said, and other possible solutions, such as lightly electrified pads, didn’t work out.

“I’m also curious to see where the sea lions go,” Knight said, adding jokingly he hopes they won’t make their way to the Port’s West End Mooring Basin.

Commissioner Stephen Fulton asked about an offer he’d heard in the community to build a sea lion-specific dock.

Mike Weston, the Port’s director of business development and operations, said sometime last year, the Port had been approached by Sea Shepherd with an offer to pay for a sea lion dock. But the offer would have stipulated that the Port expel the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife from the East End Mooring Basin, Weston added, and the Port can’t control what the state does.

ODFW periodically traps and brands sea lions at the basin, as part of a tracking effort. It’s authorized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to kill up to 93 sea lions a year found predating on salmon at Bonneville Dam.

Larger issue

The sea lion issue has been a divisive one, with members of the Sea Lion Defense Brigade regularly attending Port meetings and squaring off with diametrically opposed audience members, and often Port Commissioner Bill Hunsinger.

“We don’t have to, in the Port of Astoria, provide a sanctuary for sea lions,” Hunsinger said, adding that nature’s balance is out of whack, with sea lions possibly finding a new place to breed and live full time now that they’re starving in California.

Biologists from NOAA have pointed to odd wind patterns leading to rising ocean temperatures affecting the food source of sea lions, largely sardines. Female sea lions are taking longer to find food for their pups, who are looking for food on their own before they are ready, and washing up emaciated along the West Coast. Meanwhile, sea lions are moving north and into the Columbia River to take advantage of strong runs of smelt and salmon.

Numbers of sea lions spiked during the smelt run in March, with one count by the ODFW estimating more than 2,300 in the East End Mooring Basin. The situation seems to have boiled over, with a federal investigation by NOAA agents into possible sea lion shootings at the basin earlier this month.

“Clearly there is something wrong with ocean conditions,” and sea lions need more support than ever before, Astoria resident Ted Thomas said. He asked the Port Commission to publicly condemn the possible shootings, state its support for the Marine Mammal Protection Act and release to the public the same surveillance tape footage Port staff gave to NOAA investigators.

Members of the Sea Lion Defense Brigade, including Stacey McKenney and Veronica Montoya, approached and commented about how the sea lions are so noisy because of the ODFW branding.