Unusually warm ocean water along the West Coast is to blame for the mass starvation, sickness and deaths of hundreds of sea lion pups in California this winter, scientists said Wednesday.
About 940 sick and starving young sea lions have washed up on California beaches so far this year and were taken into the eight rehabilitation centers between San Diego and San Francisco. That’s four times the number of strandings that occur on average in the first four months of a normal year, marine biologists said.
The number of pinnipeds being treated exceeds the number of rescues during the same period in 2013, a year in which so many sea lions washed ashore that the National Marine Fisheries Service declared a rare “unusual mortality event.”
“We are way above average,” said Justin Viezbicke, the stranding network coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries in California, adding that 550 of the rescued pups were still being treated. “Right now most of our facilities, if they are not at capacity, are close to it. … The reality is that we can’t get to all of these animals. Our capacity to handle all of these animals coming to shore just isn’t there.”
The problem is that the ocean is 2 to 5 degrees warmer than the average for this time of year, a trend that has persisted throughout much of 2014, according to Nate Mantua, a NOAA climatologist.
He said the warming trend has been moving northward and now covers virtually all of the coastal waters of Northern California. He said it is being caused by the same high-pressure system that is causing the drought, but in this case it’s the lack of wind from the north and the lack of deep ocean upwelling those winds churn up that have caused the ocean to warm.
“It is reminiscent of the kind of warming we’ve seen during extreme El Niño events,” Mantua said. “The warming is about as strong as anything that’s in the historical record for the northeast Pacific and the West Coast.”
The odd thing, he said, is that the warming is occurring even though the warming weather pattern known as El Niño is not in effect. And, he said, it’s not just on the surface. The warm ocean temperatures go down about 100 meters, enough to force the fish that sea lions feed on to migrate north, making it harder for the pinniped mothers to find food for their pups.
Dozens of subtropical fish, including yellowfin tuna, pelagic red crabs and green sea turtles, have been found in Central California waters, far north of where they normally go.
Mantua said ocean warming has been observed in the past, but rarely do these conditions last as long as this trend.
Posted by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in News, US 2 weeks ago
10,000 baby sea lions have washed up dead on a California island, with experts calling the unexplained deaths a “crisis” and “[Pups] are washing ashore at a rate so alarming, rescuers said Thursday, this year is the worst yet”. Enenews.com reports
Michele Hunter, the center’s director of animal care, said, “It’s very difficult to see so much death.” Sacramento Bee, Mar 7, 2015: Tens of thousands of pups birthed last summer are believed to be dying on the islands… some [are] desperately trying to climb onto small boats or kayaks… Scientists noted a worrisome anomaly in 2013, when 1,171 famished pups were stranded…
Marine Mammal Center, Mar 5, 2015: It’s clear these sea lions are trying to tell us something. Their very presence here in such great numbers at this time of year is sounding an alarm up and down the coast… it signals something complex happening in our ocean… sea lions are very sensitive to their environment… alerting us to major changes in the ocean… The scene on the Channel Islands this year is grave, worse even than what researchers saw in 2012, before the Unusual Mortality Event in 2013… “What’s scary is that we don’t know when this will end,” says Dr. Shawn Johnson, Director of Veterinary Science at The Marine Mammal Center.
“This could be the new normal—a changed environment that we’re dealing with now.” LA Daily News, Mar 13, 2015: “By the end of January, we had as many as we did in (all of) 2013,” [Marine Mammal Care Center’s David Bard] said… “We’ve never seen anything like this with back-to-back events that are affecting the same part of the population,” Melin said. Dr. Melin: “Based on what we are seeing… we should be bracing for a lot more animals” CBS Los Angeles, Mar 9, 2015: [California Wildlife Center’s Jeff Hall] says the event has escalated into a crisis. “I would personally consider this a crisis,” Hall said… The epidemic has prompted a number of volunteers to step forward, including… television personality Kat Von D [who said] “I think there’s a lack of awareness of what’s going on in the environment.”
Warmer waters off the coast of California are likely driving away sea lions’ prey such as squid, anchovies, and sardines, said Justin Viezbicke, stranding services coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As a result, mother sea lions are having to go further from birthing grounds — usually around the Channel Islands — to forage for food, meaning that pups probably don’t get enough nutrients from their mothers when they return. The pups then wean off their mothers earlier and are underweight when they leave the island, likely to find food of their own.
“They’re leaving with a low tank of gas and there’s really not much out there to help them out,” said Viezbicke. “They’re jumping into … a challenging environment and then they’re ending up washing ashore on the mainland, starving.”
Organizations like NOAA and other animal rescue programs have been taking in pups and feeding them — but that’s only a stopgap measure.
“This is something that’s naturally occurring out there, so there’s really not much we can do other than watch and learn from the situation,” Viezbicke said. “We can’t really prevent or stop it, unfortunately.”
Left to their own devices, these stranded sea lion pups probably wouldn’t make it. (No judgement if you need a tissue here. I’ll wait.)
As sad as it sounds, starvation events and mass mortality events (in which vast numbers of animals die), are becoming more and more common in this wacky, warming world. Thanks to a number of large-scale, systemic alterations (lookin’ at you, El Niño and warming ocean temps), the world’s ecosystems hang in a delicate balance.
Meet the Cassin auklet — a pudgy, fist-sized seabird with crescent-shaped eye markings and pale blue feet. They’re pretty dang cute. And thousands of them are washing up dead along the West Coast — all the way from Northern California to British Columbia.
“My volunteers alone … have found 7,000 carcasses [over the last four months],” said Julia Parrish, executive director of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) at the University of Washington. “It’s a scary big number.”
Like the sea lions, auklets are literally dying for a meal. The birds primarily feed on zooplankton or krill. However, in the last year, a mass of warm water — very scientifically named “the blob” — drove the usual Pacific krill into deeper waters and brought in a host of zooplankton that the auklets don’t eat, reported Audubon Magazine.
When a high number of birds wash ashore dead, the events are called “wrecks.” Generally speaking, smaller wrecks are fairly normal, Parrish explained. If there’s a storm out at sea, it’s not unusual for seabirds caught in its path to die, whether from starvation or storm conditions, and later wash up on beaches. That’s just how it goes.
But this time, something is different. “This is the biggest wreck we’ve ever seen in the 16 years we’ve been doing this work,” Parrish said. “I think it’s probably the largest wreck we’ve seen on West Coast … That makes me sit up and take notice.”
This winter’s wreck could be especially bad if enough of the dead auklets turn out to be adults, because an entire reproductive group may have been wiped out. They won’t know for sure until the birds return to their breeding grounds. Until then, it’s a lot of waiting and counting dead birds.
D. Derickson/COASST
So is this climate change at play? Scientists are hesitant to say.
Dee Boersma, a conservation scientist and founder of the Penguin Sentinels Project at UW, compares the vulnerability of seabirds to weather and climate to the vulnerability of a human crossing a busy street: You could get hit by a truck, but it doesn’t happen every time. And just as it’s hard to predict exactly how likely you are to survive a street-crossing as a human, the same goes for storms and their effects on Magellanic penguins, she said.
In 2014, Boersma and other penguin researchers published a study in PLOS ONE which found that climate change was directly responsible for the deaths of more than 200 Magellanic penguin chicks from 1983 to 2010 in Punta Tombo, Argentina. There, climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of storms, while lowering the reproductive success of Magellanic penguins, the study reported.
During the 27-year-long study, young penguins perished at a high rate due to a combination of starvation and overexposure during exceptionally rainy and hot seasons. The chicks’ feather coats keep them cozy when they are dry, but that changes when they get wet: The fluffy down isn’t waterproof, like adult penguin feathers. So if a penguin chick gets caught in the rain during a storm, it’s like a human “being stuck outside and naked in a wet sleeping bag … the penguins basically die of hypothermia like you or I would,” said Boersma.
Plus, a lack of food leaves the chicks unprepared to cool themselves down when things heat up, since they rely on the food their parents bring them for all of their water. Without adequate hydration, the chicks can’t depend on evaporation to keep cool and become vulnerable to heat stress.
It’s a lethal combination: Over the course of the study, an average of 65 percent of the Punta Tombo chicks died every year, with about 40 percent dying of starvation.
Chicks that died of hypothermia after a rainstorm.Dee Boersma / University of Washington
So what was that about climate change again? Mass animal die-offs and starvation epidemics are shocking no matter what, even to hardened scientists. Climate change is just exacerbating these kinds of things.
“The fact is that we have populations responding to warming events, whether the warming is temporary or inexorable,” said Parrish, the researcher studying the dying auks.
The world’s ecosystems are hanging on as best they can, but small things can throw them out of balance. It’s unfair to compare the temperatures that a wild ecosystem can withstand to the temperatures humans can, because we have tools and technology on our side. “Wildlife needs habitat,” Parrish said. “In today’s crowded world, habitat only exists in certain places — places that we protect. And when the climate warms, those places change.”
“[Even one degree] is a huge deal,” Parrish points out. To understand and support conservation efforts, humans need to “think like a fish, a clam, or an oyster, and not like a person.”
I’m sure you remember Washington State wolf-poacher, Bill White of Twisp. I knew him all too well, having spent a third of my life outside the same small town. Like most serial killers, he’d seem like a nice guy if you saw him chatting it up with passers-by from his booth at the farmer’s market, selling his popular “all natural” “grass-fed” beef to unsuspecting buyers of all political stripes.
Little did they know they were supporting a soon-to-be infamous serial-poacher who defied “game” laws galore while hound-hunting bears and cougars and ultimately baiting the state’s first known wolf pack, the “Lookouts,” luring them to their deaths at his 100 acre ranch on the side of Lookout Mountain.
Not only did he and his son kill most of the Lookouts before the pack was even officially recognized, the poaching ring also flouted international trade laws by trying to send a bloody wolf hide over the border into Canada. Ironically, that crime was to be their undoing.
As it turns out, if they had waited for the government to declare them legal, those exact same crimes would have been perfectly acceptable—with the applicable authorizations. Hunters in Montana can now get permits to do just what the Whites tried to do illegally, murder wolves and ship their hides to Canada.
The message being sent here is: murder isn’t a crime as long as you get permission. Kill a wolf in cold blood, skin it and send its hide to a dealer across the border? No problem, just get a permit. (Washingtonians or Oregonians, be sure to say it was chasing your cows, or looking crossways at dog or baby first.) There’s a permit for everything…you just have to learn to jump through the right hoops.
Another case of permits making killing all better: the shooting of sea lions—an all too common practice that has driven the Steller (or Northern) sea lion to the brink of extinction. That endangered species’ population has been reduced by 80% from what they were before the thrill-killing heyday. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed in the early 1970s, may have slowed the killing, but exploiters could always get permits to do away with the competition. For the longest time all a commercial fisherman would have to do was claim sea lions ate “their fish” and they were granted a permit to fire at will.
Apparently, snuffing out a beautiful, sentient, social being is not considered a crime, but failure to get the right permits is another thing altogether. Want to dredge the bottom of the ocean for every last little bit of sea life, entangling and starving out sea lions, seals, whales and dolphins in the process? Kill off the entire planet in the name of resource extraction? No problem—just be sure you have a permit first.
Remember, even budding serial killers must obtain the proper permit.
Some viewpoints need to go extinct, and the hate-speak espoused by Capt. Ron Malast in his opinion piece, “Let Steller sea lions go extinct,” is at the top of the list. So, the Steller sea lion population is starting to re-grow a little after the commercial seal trade, ruthless bounties and constant shooting as “competition” drove them, and just about every other pinniped species, to the brink of extinction.
The eastern pacific population of Steller sea lions may be up to 70,000 individuals now, but the human population of 7.2 billion grows by 350,000 per day. Let that sink in for a minute… 350,000 PER DAY!
350,000 is also the total number of all other great apes alive today—every chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla and orangutan—combined. Why is that significant? Because scientifically speaking, that’s all we humans really are—just another species of ape, somewhere between chimps and gorillas. Homo sapiens share 98% of our DNA with Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzees.
But while seals and sea lions were evolving into self-sufficient sea mammals, adapting to pelagic life by perfecting the art of holding their breath for up to a half an hour and diving to depths of 600’ or more, human-types were busy developing a profoundly narcissistic sense of entitlement that took root early in Man’s prehistory. This feeling of privilege flourished as our species spread out and usurped every other species’ habitats and resources. From the mightiest bison of the plains to the flattest fish at the bottom of the ocean, we claimed the top of every food chain we could sink our teeth into.
The anthropogenic mass extinction following close on the heels of human’s surging population explosion already saw the end of the Steller sea cow and the Caribbean seal, both hunted to extinction in centuries past. Glibly calling for the extinction of wolves or Steller sea lions to snuff out the competition summons back an outdated attitude that should have long since been dead and buried.
5. Seals and sea lionsare scapegoated and shot by commercial fishermen and their lackeys who blame the marine mammals for dwindling fish populations. It’s the same “all here for us” mentality that ranchers and trophy hunters use to justify killing wolves.
Painting by Barry K. MacKay
4. Cormorants are culled by the thousands, by both commercial and sport fishing interests unwilling to share “their” resources. Last April, sport fishermen in South Carolina shot over 11,000 cormorants for the crime of eating fish; and the U.S. Government is currently planning $1.5 million-a-year program that would arm federal trappers with silenced rifles and night-vision scopes to shoot thousands of Columbia River cormorants during their nesting season .
3. Live fish sequester carbon. The sea absorbs about half of the billions of tons of CO2 humans produce…, but only if there’s plenty of phytoplankton, fish and other organisms living in it.
1. Fish are sentient beings too, no less deserving of compassion than any other species humans claim as their food. Flying in the face of what is considered popular opinion, fish have good memories, build complicated structures and show behaviour seen in primates – as well as feel pain like any other vertebrates.
“What kind of person can cut an ancient forest to bloody stumps, bulldoze the meadows to mud, spray poison over the mess that’s left, and then set smudge fires in the slash? And when the wounded mountainside slumps into the river, floods tear apart the waterfalls and scour the spawning beds, and no salmon return, what kind of person can pronounce it an act of God — and then direct the bulldozers through the stream and into the next forest, and the next? I hope there’s a cave in hell for people like this, where an insane little demon hops around shouting, ‘jobs or trees, jobs or trees,’ and buries an ax blade in their knees every time they struggle to their feet.”
-Kathleen Dean Moore
…and then take it out on the seals and sea lions for feeding on the fish, as they’ve always done. This is what happened to the salmon spawning beds around here.
Commentary By Sandy McElhaney, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The once “mighty” Columbia River is now a toxic chemical soup
Photo: Sea Shepherd / Sandy McElhaneyApril 2014 was a record-setting month at the Bonneville Dam. On April 30th, 17,972 salmon passed through the Dam’s fish ladders. This was the third-highest single-day fish count at the Dam since 2002. With current projections of a salmon run size of 185,000, state officials are now adding days to the sport fishery season. There is, however, a catch. If you want to sport fish for salmon on the Columbia River, you must be human. If you are a California sea lion caught fishing near the Bonneville Dam, you will be killed.
April 2014 also has the dishonorable distinction of being the deadliest month on record for California sea lions along the Columbia River. On three consecutive Tuesdays, state workers mercilessly killed twelve sea lions because they had the audacity to eat salmon near the Bonneville Dam. The killing spree began on Tuesday, April 15. On that date, six sea lions were executed. One week later, on April 22, state workers lethally injected three more sea lions. On April 29, three more lives were extinguished. Sadly, the month of May began just as ominously as April ended, with another three sea lions killed on the first day of the month, bringing the death toll for the year up to 15 — so far. Authorization from the federal government to the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, allows these states to put to death as many as 92 sea lions annually through 2016, simply for eating salmon near the Bonneville Dam.
The kill notices are posted on the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) website. The first notice of 2014 read simply, “Six California sea lions, on the list for removal, were trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.” That was it. Just 17 dispassionate words were used to sum up the tragic and senseless end to the lives of six individuals who were once a vital part of the ecosystem of the Columbia River. A mandated report from the state of Oregon to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS is the federal entity that authorized the killings in 2012) further stated that “various biological samples were collected for examination and the remaining materials were disposed of in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.” If the sea lion executioners are still following the same practices used when they killed their first victim (branded by Oregon as C265) in 2009, then the skeletons of these poor animals will be articulated and used for research and their flesh sent off to Darling International Rendering Plant in Tacoma, Washington, where they could eventually become fertilizer.
Five of the sea lions killed on April 15 were among those “championed” by Sea Shepherd supporters in 2013 so they could be remembered by name as unique individuals, instead of being known only by the hideous brands on their backs. Their names and their champions are as follows:
Number
Champion
Name
C027
Frances Holtman
Oceanus
C028
Graziella Garri
Proteus
C035
Stephan Oelgardt
Thery
U254
Brian Lochlaer
Barack Obama
U262
Elke Simmons
Ahimsa
RIP U84
Photo: Sea Shepherd / Be Bosworth-CooperAlso killed was U84, who died nameless, but whose image was forever captured on film by Dam Guardian Be Bosworth-Cooper at the Port of Astoria. Several of the now slain animals were branded at the Port in 2013. This charming waterfront town was made famous by the 1985 movie, “The Goonies,” but today it is best known for its ongoing cruelty to sea lions. Tourists and other visitors to the Port are often alarmed to see workers from ODFW “haze” resting sea lions with nowhere to go off of the “goondocks”. Periodically, sea lions are trapped in cages and forcibly branded with hot irons. Sea Shepherd’s Dam Guardians documented this barbaric practice on multiple occasions in 2012 and 2013. Our footage shows state employee Matthew Tennis standing on, kicking and setting sea lions on fire. These findings were shared with NMFS and Sea Shepherd was informed in writing by the agency that Tennis would henceforth be supervised when capturing and “marking” (branding) sea lions.
An update posted to the ODFW website dated Tuesday April 22 reported, “Seven California sea lions were trapped. Three were on the list for removal and were euthanized. Four were branded and released.” The three sea lions killed were those branded with the numbers C020 (“Dewey,” championed by Allison Cabellon), C029 (“Rocky,” championed by Benjamin Bell), and C930 (“Cesare,” championed by Selena Rhodes Scofield). Three more sea lions were reported to have been euthanized on Tuesday, April 29: C033, U267 and U312. On May 1, the state killed sea lions C031, U264 and B409.
Conveniently, the six sea lions killed on April 29 and May 1 were added to the official NOAA-authorized “hit list” on April 28, 2014, along with five others who are now literally marked for death. Sea lion U312 was killed because he was “observed at the dam on 7 days in 2014 with 2 documented salmonids consumed.” News of his death comes as an especially harsh emotional blow to Sea Shepherd’s Dam Guardians, who witnessed and documented his cruel branding by Oregon state workers in Astoria on March 24, 2013.
The ODFW website talks about California sea lion “management” and “restoring the balance between predators and salmon”. The most recent report from the Army Corps of Engineers claims that California sea lions have consumed 222 salmon at the Bonneville Dam since January; meanwhile, The Seattle Times reported that recreational anglers had landed and kept 9,358 Chinook from March 1-April 14. The state’s concept of “management” is, at best, draconian; at worst it is a display of total ignorance of the real problems in the Columbia River, and the efforts by real conservationists who care deeply about preserving the river, the salmon and the sea lions.
With our history of defending, conserving and protecting marine wildlife and habitats spanning 37 years, Sea Shepherd knows that the real predators are not the sea lions. The real predators are the people who have desecrated one of our nation’s great and beautiful rivers by flushing it with 92 contaminants which have been found in Columbia River fish, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, furans, arsenic, dieldrin, mercury, and DDE – a breakdown product of DDT. The Oregon Environmental Council has classified the Columbia River as being on “Red Alert,” meaning it has serious water quality problems, including toxins that are dangerous to both human and aquatic health. A 2012 study by the Columbia Riverkeepers found PCB concentrations in fish to be 27,000% above levels considered by the EPA to be safe for unrestricted human consumption. So while ODFW is wasting your taxpayer dollars to brand, haze and kill sea lions, the salmon are still swimming in a cesspool of cancer-causing poisons.
As a cancer survivor, I would encourage anyone I care about to avoid consuming toxic fish from the Columbia, and as a Sea Shepherd Dam Guardian I encourage everyone to call upon the governors of Oregon and Washington to immediately redirect their efforts away from killing sea lions and toward restoring the health of the water – before it’s too late.
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber
State Capitol Building
900 Court Street Salem, OR 97301
phone: (503) 378-4582 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting(503) 378-4582 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
fax: (503) 378-6827
Internet: Request Assistance
Facebook: John Kitzhaber
twitter: @govkitz
Washington Governor Jay Inslee
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
phone: (360) 902-4111 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting(360) 902-4111 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
fax: 360-753-4110
Internet: Contact Gov. Inslee
Facebook: Governer Inslee
twitter: @govInslee
Our friends at the Humane Society of the United States, who have long championed the Columbia River sea lions in court, have letters for you to send to the governors at this link: Humane Society – Six Sea Lions Killed at Bonneville Dam
Our friends at the Sea Lion Defense Brigade are leading the ground campaign along the Columbia this season. To join them on the ground, please contact: sealiondefensebrigade@gmail.com. The Sea Lion Defense Brigade is asking concerned citizens to contact NOAA and to urge the agency to cancel the states’ authorization to kill sea lions. Up to 77 more sea lions could be killed in 2014. Please contact NOAA using the contact information below and ask them to grant clemency to these marine mammals who simply eat salmon to survive:
Donna Wieting
Director, Office of Protected Resources
NOAA
Phone 301 713-2332 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting301 713-2332 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Fax 301 427-2520
Email: donna.wieting@noaa.gov
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring MD 20910
We tried to visit Astoria’s East Mooring Basin to see the sea lions yesterday. I hadn’t been there in about a year, but I remember it as one of those special places on Earth, like Newport, Oregon or like California’s San Fransisco Bay must be, where you walk among large sea mammals going about their daily lives. Well, we found the place locked up tighter than a militarized zone, with fences, chains and keep out signs stretching clear across the former public walkway.
What were they trying to hide? We found out almost exactly 2 years ago, as I wrote about here:
On Friday, May 4, my wife and I stopped at the East Moring Basin on the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon, to see the sea lions who spend the daytime hours hauled out on one of the floating docks there. It’s always a treat to watch their antics and to hear the raucous roaring of competitive bulls mouthing off to anyone who might try to wriggle in and crowd their personal space. As expected we heard bellowing as soon as we arrived, but this time the sea lions had something serious to protest: an unfortunate herd-mate had been trapped and was being held down tightly and tormented by a group of strange and menacing two-leggers wearing orange raingear, one of whom pulled out a hot iron and repeatedly branded the restrained sea lion. As the victim struggled, acrid smoke from his burning flesh drifted for a hundred yards across the harbor.
The searing pain of the branding may have been temporary, but now the sea lion is branded in the figurative sense of the word as well, and his troubles are just beginning. With the numbers viciously burned onto the animal’s back, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife thus has a clever way to recognize him. Later, they will decide whether or not to add him to their annual hit list of 92 sea lions they plan to kill if they reach the man-made dam that impedes the ancient migration route of spawning salmon.
It speaks volumes about the trusting nature of sea lions that they are willing to return to Astoria year after year. Since its establishment in 1811 as a hub for the booming, bloody fur trade, Astoria has been the scene of countless crimes against marine animals, including sea lions, who were killed along the Oregon coast by the thousands—exclusively for lamp oil.
Charles M. Scammon—whaler, sealer, mariner and infamous discoverer and exploiter of the gray whale birthing lagoons in Baja California—devoted a chapter to sea lions in his book, The Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America: Together with an account of the American Whale-Fishery. He begins that chapter with the lines, “Among the numerous species of marine mammalia found upon the Pacific coast of North America, none excite more interest than the sea lion;” Scammon goes on to describe an average day in the life of the pitiless sealers, and the last day ever for a group of sea lions. “On the south coast of Santa Barbara Island was a plateau, elevated less than a hundred feet above the sea, stretching to the brink of a cliff that overhung the shore, and a narrow gorge leading up from the beach, through which the animals crawled to their favorite resting-place. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to take them; but, at last, a fresh breeze commenced blowing directly from the shore, and prevented their scenting the hunters, who landed some distance from the rookery, then cautiously advanced, and suddenly, yelling and flourishing muskets, clubs, and lances, rushed up within a few yards of them, while the pleading creatures, with lolling tongues and glaring eyes, were quite overcome with dismay, and remained nearly motionless. At last, two overgrown males broke through the line formed by the men, but they paid the penalty with their lives before reaching the water. A few moments passed, when all hands moved slowly toward the rookery, which had slowly retreated. This maneuver is called “turning them” and, when once accomplished, the disheartened creatures appear to abandon all hope of escape, and resign themselves to their fate. The herd at that time numbered 75, which were soon dispatched by shooting the largest ones, and clubbing and lancing the others, save for one young sea lion, which they spared to ascertain whether it would make any resistance by being driven over the hills beyond. The poor creature only moved along through the prickly pears that covered the ground, when compelled by his cruel pursuers; and, at last, with an imploring look and writhing in pain, it held out its fin-like arms, which were pierced with thorns, in such a manner as to touch the sympathy of the barbarous sealers who put the sufferer out of its misery with the stroke of a heavy club.”
Scammon ends his chapter with the prediction that the Pacific Coast sea lions “…will soon be exterminated by the deadly shot of the rifle, or driven away to less accessible haunts.” Today the few sea lions who have managed to hold on are again under attack, this time for the crime of daring to survive despite industrial scale over-fishing depleting their only food source.
My uncle (god rest his soul) used to be a skipper on a charter fishing boat. He fished for salmon off the Columbia River bar (among the roughest waters in the world). It was from him that I first heard the attitude that natural predators like cougars “serve no earthly purpose.”
Being the young, environmentally-minded wildlife advocate that I was, I strongly disagreed with his viewpoint on many occasions. But, being respectful of my relatives, especially my elders, I never gave him a hard time for his outdated thinking.
A lot of good that did me. Now that I’m an uncle, my young nephew shows me nothing of the respect I gave my uncle. Although he’s three generations removed from my uncle’s era, some of my nephew’s thinking is as outdated as that of any other commercial fisherman I have known (and there have been all too many). Apparently he’s been following this blog, but like other animal exploiters who try to comment, he neglected to read the “About” page, which would have informed him that anti-animal comments would not be approved.
But here are few extracts from comments he tried to leave today: “… what exactly is the solution? Stop eating cows all together, stop allowing them to breed, and make them go extinct?” or “…get off your high horse. [again, remember that this is his uncle he’s talking to] Saying that veal exists because of the dairy industry is a logical fallacy akin to: crime exists because of the existence of police officers. Veal exists because people want to eat veal. Do you honestly think that if we got rid of all dairy consumption tomorrow, no one would be able to buy veal?! On the flip side, if no one on earth was willing to buy veal, do you think that ranchers would still produce it?!”
I’m not sure what point he was trying to get across with that comment, but his clincher was: “If we were all to stop fishing tomorrow then a lot of sea lions would die.”
I might not have been a perfect example for my nephew over the years, but at least I try to learn from my mistakes.
Exposing the Big Game 