Fishing for Answers : Wildlife: Commercial anglers are scrambling to find ways to scare off hungry sea lions that are stealing fish off the lines. Get-tough measures include non-lethal weapons and dynamite, which has marine mammal advocates concerned.
It’s noon on the Isle of Redondo fishing barge and barge master Gordon King is up to his gills in fish heads.
In the past few hours, a group of hungry sea lions circling the barge has reduced most of his clients’ catch to leftovers unfit for a doggie bag.
King already has detonated nearly a dozen seal bombs to try to scare the sea lions away. Now it is time to reach for heavier artillery. He stalks into his office, pulls out a .177-caliber air gun loaded with BBs and aims at a sea lion frolicking in the water below.
A couple of the pellets hit one sea lion with a thwack, but they seem to make little impression on the blubbery mammal, which continues to cruise close to the barge. So this week, King says, the weapon of choice will be shotgun loaded with rock salt.
“The rock salt stings, but it’s not lethal,” King explained. “I don’t want bloodshed--that would be bad for business. But I’m not going to watch our passenger counts decline because these sea lions are stealing their catch.”
The war between fishermen and sea lions is escalating in Redondo Beach.
Although many anglers welcome the type of get-tough attitude displayed by King, some marine mammal advocates are outraged that sportfishermen are turning to increasingly potent firepower to ward off sea lions.
“I’d like to see someone fire a shotgun full of rock salt at those fishermen and see how they like it,” said Judi Jones, director of operations for Friends of the Sea Lions, a rescue and rehabilitation center in Orange County.
“I can understand it would be frustrating to have this beautiful fish on the end of a hook and then have a sea lion snatch it away,” she added. “But the sea lions were there first. They can’t go to McDonald’s and buy a fish burger.”
Local fishermen, however, say they are fed up with what they call “the sea lion problem” in Santa Monica Bay. Under the protection of federal law, the state’s sea lion population has grown significantly in the past 10 years. But not everyone applauds the animal’s return.
Basking sea lions emit a smell that some local boat owners say is worse than rotten eggs. And animal control authorities say sea lions are responsible for a surge in nuisance complaints from boaters and harbor residents.
A visit to the Isle of Redondo fishing barge helps to illustrate why sportfishermen are up in arms.
A 20-minute ferry ride that costs $12 per person takes anglers to the huge barge, which rises and falls on the ocean swells about two miles offshore.
About 50 anglers, some from as far away as Pomona, line up around the barge’s perimeter. For the most part, their concentration is aimed straight ahead, where at least five adult sea lions are breaking the surface for breaths between dives.
The sea lions have been unusually aggressive today, and Lomita resident Tony Roa, 37, has been unluckier than most.
Although he has hooked five mackerel and three bonito in the past few hours, it looks like he might go home with an empty bag. When the electric company worker feels another pull on his line, he quickly springs into action.
“There it goes, there it goes,” he says excitedly while trying to reel in his fish.
But Gabriel Martinez, 67, who has been fishing alongside him all morning, has just spotted a telltale shadow making its way toward the prize.
“Looks like we got another head hunter,” Martinez says.
Moments later, a bloody fish head rises out of the water on the end of Roa’s line. Roa struggles to unhook it and throws it overboard. The sea lion darts out and finishes his meal.
“They’ve taken every good fish and all they leave is the head,” Roa said dejectedly. “You just don’t have a chance. It’s really a waste of time, unless you like feeding sea lions.”
The state’s sea lion population has grown to more than 110,000 since Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, federal officials say. Biologists say that growth isn’t the only reason the animals are competing more intensely for food.
El Nino, the warm-water current that upsets the ecological balance of local waters at least once a decade, has temporarily changed the local fish supply, said James Carretta, a federal fishery biologist who studies sea lions. Because the kinds of fish that normally make up their diets are less abundant than usual, sea lions are foraging for food in places they normally wouldn’t go, he said.
“It’s not that they’re getting braver,” Carretta said. “They’re just desperate this year for food. . . . If they had a choice, they would rather not be around people.”
For people such as King, whose livelihoods are being threatened by the hungry sea lions, that explanation holds little comfort.
Business is down on the Isle of Redondo barge by one-third this year, and King believes that sea lions are to blame for at least half of the drop in demand.
“My regular clientele is off because they know what the problem is and they tend to stay away when the sea lions are around,” King said.
In his frustration, King began circulating a petition a few months ago asking the National Marine Fisheries Service and other state government agencies to “take action to solve the California sea lion problem.”
He gathered about 4,000 signatures but has yet to submit the petition to state or federal authorities. Now that he has discovered he can use firearms to scare away sea lions, he says, he has put the petition on hold.
For most of the year, King was resigned to using “seal bombs,” made of a quarter-stick of dynamite, to ward off the mammals.
But last week, he received a letter from a National Marine Fisheries Service official that clarified what he could do when sea lions steal his customers’ catch.
Although sea lions are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, crew members of commercial fishing operations, charter sportfishing vessels and barges may injure or kill sea lions if they are in the process of damaging a fisherman’s gear or catch, said James Lecky, chief of the fisheries agency’s protected species division. Under the guidelines, which took effect in 1989, crew members must first attempt to scare the animals away with noise devices or seal bombs, however.
“It’s an old policy, but a lot of skippers out there didn’t realize they had that option to begin with,” said Joseph Cordaro, a wildlife marine biologist with the federal fisheries agency.
Armed with a written copy of the rules, King last week brought an air gun to the barge.
But a week of shooting BBs at sea lions did not have the effect he had hoped for, and he now plans to bring in a shotgun loaded with rock salt.
“I had high hopes that the air rifle here would be effective against the sea lions, to move them away from us,” King said. “But it’s like shooting an elephant with a peashooter. I feel like I’m shooting a rubber band at them.”
Nevertheless, marine mammal experts and even some sportfishing advocates express alarm that King has taken up arms against sea lions.
“BBs can penetrate skin and they have the potential of hitting organs or eyes,” Jones said.
“And where does it stop?” asked Peter Wallerstein, president of the Whale Rescue Team, a private, nonprofit organization that rescues whales, dolphins and sea lions caught in gill nets throughout Santa Monica Bay. “Once the BB guns don’t work, what are they going to do next?”
He believes that the sea lion population has gotten out of control because their natural predators, including sharks, are being killed in gill nets. Get rid of gill nets, he says, and sharks will once again thrive and the sea lion problem will disappear.
Commercial fishermen may not like that idea. But even Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California, is counseling his colleagues against using guns on sea lions. The reason: He is afraid that it will trigger a review by federal officials that could result in the imposition of stricter guidelines.
Also, he believes that sound devices being developed in Sweden may ultimately prove more effective in keeping sea lions out of fishing areas.
“In my mind, you’re not going to solve the problem with rock salt,” Fletcher said. “You’re going to solve it by recognizing there is a problem. And we are facing a real crisis in our industry.”
