Here’s the tail of a hatchery steelhead we recently caught on the Klamath River. This fish had obviously had a very close call down at the mouth of the river with…
a marine mammal. It’s amazing that it was able to swim at all, let alone put up a good scrap 15 miles upriver, where we hooked it…
When Sealions Attack!
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
If anything is certain from this discussion – it’s that the situation is complicated. It’s far too simple to point fingers at each other…
It seems the largest culprit, ultimately, are the dams, global warming and habitat destruction. Who is responsible for this?
We all are. We use power generated from those destructive dams… we drive the cars that pour CO2 into our atmosphere… we eat the food produced by corporate agriculture.
So, to the mysterious person who started this discussion, unless you live in a tent in the wilderness and live off the land (which I highly doubt as you have internet access), you can go ahead and add yourself to your List of Blame for the salmon population decline. Blame me too (I can take it)… and blame everyone else. Blame, blame, blame…
The sooner we ALL accept responsibility and start changing our over-consuming habits and voting for politicians who believe the environment is worth saving, the sooner we can start to really fix this problem.
P.S. To the person who said “Fishermen kill many times more salmon on the Columbia than sea lions do. This, too, is a concrete fact.” :
Sea lions kill 3%
Fisherman kill 5%
Dams kill 92%
Unless my math is horribly wrong, 5% is not “many times more salmon” than 3%. That said… 3% doesn’t seem like it warrants killing the sea lions.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/317/16145
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4688
Oh, yeah. You go right on convincing yourself that over-fishing is the best thing since gills for the NW salmon population. Meanwhile, the salmon will continue to dip into extinction, and we can have you to thank, right along with the dams, corporate agriculture, and now, LNGs. Thanks, guys. Good job. Thumbs up. I can see that you really care about the salmon. Yesirree.
Good grief! It definitely deserves a National Inquirer style follow up. Maybe “PETA kayaker disappears off Oregon coast . . obviously eaten by starving relocated sea lions”.
Hey – post a picture of a couple hot chicks in fur coats being auctioned off to benefit sea lion protester who suffered emotional distress from smelling salmon on the grill.
Or better I have a picture of a sea lion with a munched back flipper from a . . . . ferocious steelhead (really a shark but it’d make a good story). Maybe you can get a new section started here.
Keep your chin up, keep fighting the good fight, there’s know possible way to make stories so stale and boring that dicks like that can’t find some abstract hysteria to run with.
No possible way to dig one of these out with logic, obviously.
JD, do we get free asprin for reading all the comments?
I’m no Piscatorial Verbophile and all those words hurt…..
Look, the fact of the matter is we cannot debate the morality of fishing, just like it’s impossible to debate issues such as abortion, gun control, etc. Both sides are so dug into their positions that it is impossible resolve. It’s clear that a suite of factors affect salmon and steelhead, including habitat loss due to dams, degradation of remaining habitat due to land use (logging, etc), water diversion and export etc., natural predation and predation exacerbated by man (eg sea lions at Bonneville), fishing (commercial and recreational), poaching, climatic conditions that effect ocean conditions such as upwelling and downwelling , genetic degradation due to hatcheries and low population levels, etc. etc. etc.
Likely anyone of these in isolation would not cause the dramatic decline in the abundance of salmon and steelhead that we’ve witnessed over the recent decades (except maybe habitat loss due to dams), but each one clearly exacerbates the others, sort of the “straw that breaks the camels back” scenario. There are a lot of problems and no easy solutions. In my opinion, if it were not for fisherman and fish product consumers, salmon would be much, much, worse off. The sad fact is that if humans didn’t use salmon, there would be much of a push to save them. Ever hear of the arculate pearly mussel or the golden toad? They are two species that recently have gone extinct. It is because salmon and steelhead are so intricately woven into the fabric of American (including Native American) culture that so much effort is placed on trying to conserve and protect them. I would love to live in a world that protects species because it is a moral obligation, that world would still have golden toads. But it’s naive to think that we do or would ever live in a world like that.
I think salmon and steelhead populations would suffer a huge blow if we are not allowed to fish for or consume them. In our society, if something isn’t a human resource, then it is not afforded the protection it deserves. That is the way it is, sad but true. Whether its selfish or not doesn’t matter, it’s clear that fishing organizations do a tremendous amount of good for fishing, and, in my opinion, it far outweighs the harvest that occurs at the hands of fisherman.
We need our fisheries managers to step up to the plate and really start protecting the stocks that need protecting while providing hatchery fish for recreation and commercial harvest. It befuddles me that we still do an extremely poor job of predicting run sizes and still allow the harvest of wild fish. Did you know that California still marks less than 25% of the hatchery Chinook salmon? How can a enviro-conscience angler release a wild salmon if there is no way to tell that it is wild? This makes no sense.
Back to the original issue, I don’t think JD was demonizing sea lions. Nothing in the picture or text would suggest that. JD wrote another article awhile back reporting on the decision to continue to trap and relocate “problem” sea lions; there was no demonization in there either. Maybe JD made a stretch when he implicated a sea lion was the culprit, but any informed angler knows sea lions prey on salmonids and many of us, too, would have assumed that the wound was cause by a sea lion. But in no way did he advocate killing sea lions as was implied in the first comment and was accused of in the second comment. Now my opinion is biased by the fact that I know JD well and clearly the other commenters do not. I am pretty sure that JD would find another line of work if it came down to his job or the viability of our stocks of salmon and steelhead. But until it does come down to that, he will continue to fish for them in the day and do what he feels he can to protect them at night.
I agree with you JD about the salmon going extinct due to habitat loss. But it isn’t just habitat loss, its also the dams and overfishing. I’m not talking about fishermen getting a couple fish here and there, I’m talking about the commercial fishing industry. I also have helped salmon by river restoration projects, but it isn’t enough. My father is a fisherman and knows that overfishing, dams, and habitat loss are the causes for the salmon going extinct. He has told me about how horrible the gill nets are and how it’s the commercial fishing industries that are making it so hard for just regular fisherman to still fish. He also has no problems with Sea Lions and recognizes that it is not Sea Lions who are causing the salmon to go extinct. I know you didn’t technically say that, but the title, “When Sea Lions Attack” sort of implied it as this is a time where there is a lot of debate going on around this issue.
First off, I love the posters who don’t have the cajones to leave their names! Second of all, the fish in the photo is a hatchery steelhead, not a salmon, and yes killed by sport anglers who paid money to the state to have them raised for that purpose, but that’s another story entirely.
As far as the sea lion issue goes, could you please show me in the post where exactly I said anything about them being the problem? I clearly stated the what the major issues are in the decline of our salmon and steelhead runs: habitat loss is the biggie.
You clearly have no grasp of the situation when it comes to anglers being the problem. We’re allowed to retain hatchery-reared fish only in many systems — and encouraged by state biologists in most cases to do just that. So your fishermen are the problem argument doesn’t wash when it’s illegal to kill wild fish anyway.
Instead of coming in here and throwing out random facts that you can’t back up with real, hard data, try getting out there and doing something for the fish if you care so much.
For me, when I’m not out there being “the problem,” I’m just doing stuff like, I donno, sitting on the board of directors for a fishery enhancement non-profit and designing and building salmon riffles and rearing habitat on rivers… check out our projects: Click on the “News” button at the top of this site and then drag down to “River Restoration Projects.”
“PETA boy”? Whatever.
The question begged by the first poster is a serious one. I’m getting a little tired of the “PETA” shout downs every time anyone raises a question about the wisdom of over-fishing and then blaming the problem all on sea lions.
For the record, I am not a member of PETA. I’m just a thinking person who wonders why you can’t address a legitimate question: Why demonize sea lions, when the fish died in human hands, not sea lion jaws?
I agree with the first comment. It IS, indeed, ironic. And the “PETA boy” comment just underlines how really ironic it is. You think you can just kill all the fish and wildlife around yourself and not have to answer any questions about it? Those of us who really care about this region and the fish and wildlife who live here have a legitimate grip with that kind of mentality. You give all sportsmen a bad name. And frankly, you give me a bad taste in my mouth. All the “Ducks unlimited” bumper stickers and anti-PETA slogans in the world will not make up for the fact that you are short on wisdom and long on rhetoric.
The fish in the photo was killed by a fisherman. This is a real and concrete fact. Fishermen kill many times more salmon on the Columbia than sea lions do. This, too, is a concrete fact. But people like you believe it would be easier and more convenient to kill the sea lions than to face the fact that you are the problem.
Yes, dams and habitat destruction are major factors behind the salmon decline. But so are you. Anyone still out there catching salmon, when you know how few there are left, is part of the problem. A major part. And, by the way, a much larger part of the problem than sea lions.
OWNED!
Okay PETA Boy, I will give you credit for one thing…dams have indeed killed more salmon than all other factors combined. Other than that, you’re so far off base it’s hardly worth addressing your comments, but I will anyway.
Salmon are going extinct because of habitat loss not fishing. Then, throw in some other factors like lack of upwelling in the ocean, warm ocean conditions and poor in-river conditions (which gets back to habitat loss) and you’ve got the answer.
The last time I checked, spray painting fur coats didn’t save a single salmon (or fox for that matter), and you so-called animal rights people don’t exactly have a distinguished track record in preserving and restoring animal & fish habitat.
If it weren’t for the efforts of hunters and anglers, there wouldn’t be a lot of conservation happening. Any of you PETA people members of Ducks Unlimited? Pheasants Forever? The National Wild Turkey Federation? The Mule Deer Foundation? Trout Unlimited? The American Fishing Foundation? CCA? California Waterfowl?
Didn’t think so!
Ironic, isn’t it? The headline is “when sea lions attack!” Coming at a time when authorities are considering whether to start killing sea lions for the crime of eating salmon, the implication here is clear. “See? Sea lions eat salmon!” So the irony is great that this salmon escaped the sea lion, if indeed it was a sea lion that caused the injury to the tail. And yet, the salmon did not escape… the fisherman.
Fishermen are causing salmon to go extinct. Not sea lions. Fishermen and dams.