Freeloading Sea Lions Wear Out Welcome, Face Eviction

A “gang of marauding sea lions” has discovered that there is such a thing as a free lunch 1,500 miles from their California home, touching off a political battle that could spell slaughter for dozens of the animals under the very law designed to protect them.

Washington state officials have spent five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to keep the flippered freeloaders from decimating a prized run of wild steelhead trout in a shipping channel between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.

Rock music, killer whale recordings, tainted fish and 6,000 rounds of M-80 firecrackers so far have failed to discourage the 40 to 60 sea lions who consider the man-made fish ladder at Ballard Locks their private smorgasbord.

“We’re at the bottom of our bag of tricks relative to non-lethal measures,” admitted Joe Scordino, deputy director of the northwest regional offices of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which has jurisdiction over the animals.

This year, Washington is hoping to get $170,000 in federal funding to capture the sea lions and truck them home to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, but California is balking at the plan, even suggesting at one point that shooting the sea lions would be a preferable solution.

Washington fish and wildlife officials are now combing the National Marine Mammals Protection Act for legal loopholes that would allow them to do just that as a last resort--a precedent that could dramatically alter interpretation of the 1972 law.

The fight over the fate of the creatures Seattle fans generically nicknamed “Herschel” is considered unique because it makes man both the instigator and the mediator in a conflict between two wild species.

Some say the dwindling steelhead run represents far more than a convenient recreational opportunity for local anglers, or a modest income for the two Indian tribes whose treaty rights permit commercial trout fishing.

“The greatest value of that run is as an environmental barometer,” said Bob Byrne, spokesman for the Washington Department of Wildlife, which oversees the steelhead. “It serves as a miner’s canary on how we treat our environment. As long as the fish live, it must be relatively clean.

“Yes, there are other steelhead runs in other places. But there’s a danger in that argument . . . . Then you can say ‘let me cut this tree or pollute this stream--there’s always more,’ ” he said.

But some environmentalists disagree that sea lions are the culprit in the Case of the Disappearing Fish.

“Different things are adding to the steelhead decline,” said local Greenpeace spokeswoman Cynthia Rust. “Habitat destruction, for example. In Seattle, you can go to a couple of places where you used to see a spawning stream and find a parking lot or mall.

“There’s also pollution, and interception of the run by high sea drift-net fleets from Japan, Taiwan and Korea,” she said. “One Taiwanese vessel was apprehended and 4,000 tons of illegal salmon were found in the hold.”

Nevertheless, over the years, the sea lions have grown in both number and girth at Ballard Locks, devouring up to 64% of a year’s steelhead run--as many as 2,000 of the large fish. The run peaks from mid-February to mid-March.

The locks and dam were built nearly 80 years ago to control the water level in Lake Washington and provide ship and barge traffic between Lake Washington, Lake Union and Puget Sound. Part of the channel floor is concrete, and the rest is scoured clean for ship traffic. There are no kelp beds or other natural hiding places for the migrating fish.

One theory for the sea lions’ sudden appearance at Ballard Locks is that they began following large schools of fish moving northward with the warming waters of El Nino several years ago.

Because the locks mark the convergence of fresh and salt water, the fish mill downstream while undergoing physiological changes for their freshwater migration over the man-made “ladder” of ascending pools which will take them around the dam to their spawning streams.

“The fish are sort of in a trance,” explained Rust, the spokeswoman for Greenpeace, which advocates a physical barrier such as old tires to give the fish cover on their way to the ladder.

“The steelhead are maybe slower than usual, and they are single-minded about getting upstream despite a predator in the area,” she said.

The sea lions are equally determined.

Byrne said he has seen one sea lion alone gobble 16 steelhead in a single day.

“Those sea lions run 900 pounds. They’re the size of three Brian Bosworths--three middle linebackers. They need to eat 5% of their body weight a day. They want the easy life and they’ve found it at Ballard Locks.”

Although most of the sea lions hunt at the mouth of the locks, about a dozen swim right past the ships to take up position at the entrance to the fish ladder, where the confused fish wait for the water flow to pull them into the system of pools. On a recent day, three of the sea lions frolicked in the water spilling from the dam. “The fish are running a sea lion gauntlet,” Byrne said.

Passions run so high here that wildlife officials received serious death threats last year when they suggested firing rubber bullets at the sea lions to drive them off; they are bracing for another outcry this year if an experiment with rubber arrows is carried out. On the other hand, fishermen have been known to paint “Kill Herschel” signs on their boats.

The Marine Mammals Protection Act allows fishermen to kill the animals if necessary to protect their catch and gear, but there is no clear-cut provision for state officials to do the same to protect a fish run.

The possible loophole is a provision for destroying marine mammals that threaten public resources and welfare. Washington officials are hoping that the steelhead run at Ballard Locks might be considered a public resource, even though steelhead themselves are not considered an endangered species.

Public hearings on the controversy usually degenerate into shouting matches between angry fishermen and environmentalists, and hundreds of solutions--most of them unfeasible--have poured in from concerned citizens.

“We’ve had some doozies,” Scordino said.

There were people who suggested introducing polar bears to the Locks, which are in a park flanking a residential neighborhood about five minutes from downtown Seattle. Others wanted to use helicopters to help the steelhead trout escape by airlifting them over the small dam. Some firm tried to peddle its chemical compound, which turned out to be a derivative of nerve gas.

“People say to pour vinegar in the water, or have the Eskimos come talk to the sea lions, or put killer whales in the channel,” Scordino said.

A net barrier didn’t work, and neither did an acoustical assault with the sea lion equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard.

Now, a team of 18 engineers and biologists is studying ways to alter the locks and give the fish a fighting chance, but such a permanent solution is expected to take years of study and design, not to mention millions of dollars. The Army Corps of Engineers must approve--and probably fund--any structural changes.

Last year, wildlife officials captured and tagged 39 of the sea lions. The tranquilizers killed two, but the remaining 37 were turned loose 300 miles down the Washington coast. Twenty-nine showed up again in time for Sunday brunch at Ballard Locks.

Biologists say the sea lions are young unmated males who migrate from their breeding grounds in the Channel Islands of California when romance fails to bloom. They usually head back in May, though a few are beginning to hang around Seattle year-round. Eleven of the tagged animals were spotted in the Channel Islands during pup counts last summer.

The relocation plan would basically put the sea lions back in the Channel Islands two months ahead of their natural calendar, and make the swim back to Ballard Locks long enough for the peak steelhead season to pass, according to Washington officials.

But California fishermen and state agencies complain that this would merely transfer nuisance animals from one place to another without solving the problem.

In a recent letter to the California Coastal Commission, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations bitterly objected to the proposed transfer of what it dubbed “a gang of marauding sea lions.”

“California sea lions are not (permanent) residents of California,” wrote executive director Zeke Grader, Jr. “California sea lions have historically ranged along the whole Pacific Coast.

“The animal is not some sex offender that can be sent back,” he continued. “Frankly, the proposal smacks of the California bashing that is all too fashionable currently in the state of Washington.”

No lawsuits have been filed, but California officials privately say they will go to court to block the sea lions’ return.

While they agree that 60 sea lions would not make much difference in a year-round population of some 80,000, California officials and fishermen worry that relocation could open the door for turning the state into a dumping ground for problem animals.

Pete Bontadelli, director of the California Department of Fish and Game, told Washington officials in a letter last July that the department opposed shifting the problem “from one area to another.”

“We recognize that available non-lethal options to deal with this problem have proven ineffective to date,” he wrote. “Therefore, lethal removal of the problem animals may be the only practical and effective long-term solution.”

Bontadelli could not be reached for further comment.

The California Coastal Commission, going against its own staff findings that a sea lion transfer would be harmless, opposed it on similar grounds.

“We believe they should deal with a Washington problem in Washington,” said Hal Cribbs, executive secretary for the commission. “We’re not shipping our problems up there.”

But whether California has any real say in the matter may also be a matter for courts to decide, since the final decision now rests with the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal body.

And California’s concerns “aren’t realistic,” Byrne charged. “They’re problem animals specific to Ballard Locks. If they were threatening a resource in California, they’d stay in California. It’s a 1,500-mile trip.”

“We’ve pretty well eliminated easy, inexpensive and low-risk options,” the Wildlife Department spokesman added. “And we’re certainly not willing to give up those steelhead.”