Sly Thief Frustrates Fishermen

The slender barracuda was no match for Earl Strech. The 82-year-old fisherman pumped and reeled like a pro, giving it no slack, wearing it down until it finally could be reeled to the boat.

But just as the speedy game fish was about to clear the water, Strech’s rod bent sharply toward the sea, then straightened with a twang. Gone was his prize, and with it his $6 lure.

A large sea lion surfaced off the bow, looking toward Strech as if to say thanks, a breakfast of barracuda filling its jaws.

Increasingly, Strech and thousands of fellow sportfishermen are no match for California’s voracious, and multiplying, sea lions. On some trips, the powerful and intelligent mammals are gobbling catches as fast as the fish are hooked. They follow boats for hours on end. Inside marinas, they’re living even higher, tearing through the nets of bait wells and devouring a night’s haul in a matter of minutes.

“You don’t know how many lures I have out there,” said Strech, a Lakewood resident, pointing out at the Pacific. “But, hell, they was here before we was here.”

Not all fishermen are so philosophical. Boat owners and operators of sportfishing landings are calling for reexamining the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which banned hunting and has contributed mightily to a surge in the population of California sea lions from a low of 10,000 to approximately 200,000 today. An additional 75,000 or more reside off Baja California.

“In the old days we used to just shoot the hell out of them--kill ‘em,” said Don Ashley, 54, owner of Pierpoint Landing and Marina Sportfishing in Long Beach.

Evidence is mounting that, despite the law, some fishermen are bringing the old days back.

In early May, an adult male sea lion swam ashore at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Orange County with at least seven gunshot wounds to the head. When it was discovered by passersby, the animal was looking skyward, struggling to breathe, blood dripping from its mouth. It was taken to the Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Care Center in Laguna Beach and “humanely euthanized.”

Last month, a 2-year-old female sea lion came ashore partially paralyzed at Dockweiler State Beach in El Segundo, with a bullet wound to the spine. It was taken to the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro and euthanized a day later.

Also at the San Pedro facility is an adult female sea lion that beached herself in Venice in April. Bullet fragments were removed from her head, and she has responded so well to treatment that she is scheduled to be released in the next few weeks.

Last year, 596 sea lions were reported stranded on the coast, 21 of them with bullet wounds. The year before, when El Nino’s warm waters displaced fish stocks and accelerated competition between fishermen and sea mammals, more than 2,500 strandings were reported and 77 animals were found to have gunshot wounds.

“Normally people tend to be better shots,” said Jackie Ott, director of the San Pedro care facility. “So we don’t get a lot” of wounded.

Authorities investigate these cases but rarely get anywhere because there rarely are witnesses.

“We have made a few cases over the years,” said Brett Schneider, a special agent with the National Marine Fisheries Service. “Once in a while you get lucky.”

Animals Recognize Fishing Boat Sounds

Dropping anchor, the sport boat captains say, is tantamount to ringing the dinner bell. Sea lions hear the chain coursing through the water and know that anglers will soon be hooking fish.

The crews can legally toss so-called “seal bombs”--small explosives considerably more powerful than firecrackers--which are meant to scare the mammals away. Instead, the booming sound seems to alert more sea lions that dinner is on the way.

“I still like to throw ‘em [even though they don’t work] because it makes me feel better,” said Don Brockman, 42, part-owner of Davey’s Locker Sportfishing in Newport Beach and owner of the sportfishing boat Freelance and two commercial squid-fishing vessels. “I guarantee you I spend about $10,000 a year, just in seal bombs.”

The males can grow to 800 pounds, females to 250. And the animals typically eat 5% to 8% of their body weight a day. When food is abundant, they’ll eat only the choicest parts--preferring the gills and bellies--and leave the rest of the carcass.

When the City of Long Beach, a half-day boat out of Marina Sportfishing in Long Beach, shoved off the other day, deckhand Jimmy Lega, 19, told a reporter that three sea lions--two adults and a juvenile--had been hanging out at a popular area off Huntington Beach known as “the flats.” They were feeding on sardines and anchovies tossed over as “chum” to attract larger game fish, and occasionally plucking larger fish from anglers’ hooks.

“The young one basically chases bait around--he does not even want to mess with barracuda yet,” Lega said. “But he’ll come right up to the boat. The bigger ones, the 500-pounders, they mostly cruise the perimeter. They’ve learned. You see them with old bullet wounds, gill-net [scars]. . . . They’ve been slashed with knives, stuck with gaffs. . . . You name it.”

Before leaving Long Beach Harbor, skipper Mike Reed pulled the City of Long Beach alongside the bait boat Midnight Hour. Owner Bill Hargrave was at the helm. The subject of sea lions was brought up. Hargrave scowled.

“The sea lions are just eating what already belongs to them, sharing the bounty,” he said. “But once I get that bait in my pens, it’s mine.”

Not always for long. Hargrave, 45, owner of L.A. Harbor Bait Co., said he invests $1,000 to $1,200 per day in rounding up and storing the bait. “The sea lions can eliminate that in one hour,” he added angrily. “They cut through my nets like butter.”

During one period earlier this season, sea lions were costing Hargrave $10,000 a week, he said. Now, “most of them are out there [at island rookeries] answering the call of nature. They’ve got the urge, so we’re getting a short break. But in two months, they’ll be back.”

Rick Oefinger, 44, owner of Del Rey Sportfishing and Marina del Rey Bait Co., said he was having similar problems. Russ Harmon at Cisco’s Sportfishing in Oxnard said bait-well repair costs have run well into the thousands.

“The sea lion is the biggest threat to the sportfishing industry,” Oefinger said.

In 1996, the latest year for which figures are available, researchers with the California Department of Fish and Game determined through logs of party boat captains that 15% of the trips originating in Central and Northern California suffered at least some depredation by sea lions, while 13% of Southern California trips were affected.

Sea lions attacked 6.9% of all salmon caught by anglers, 5.4% of barracuda and 3.2% of mackerel. In March of 1996, sea lions removed 2,700 salmon from the hooks of sport fishermen. In June they stole a reported 6,500 barracuda and in August they nabbed 3,600 mackerel. These numbers do not include thousands of anglers who fished aboard private boats that year.

“It’s something we have to live with,” said Dick Helgren, 66, owner of Helgren’s Sportfishing in Oceanside. “What I’m afraid of, though, is that people eventually are going to get fed up with the sea lions’ impacting their catch and won’t come back.”

Other than the dollar amount for the destruction of gear, the cost of the problem is “unquantifiable,” said Robert Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California, a San Diego-based industry group that represents the interests of 75 vessels operating out of 23 ports from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Brockman said landing operators probably spend an extra $50 a day per boat for fuel so they can move from spot to spot, trying to escape the sea lions. That’s never easy, and in fact it has become a common ploy for skippers to try to pass sea lions off to other vessels by driving close to other vessels on runs to other spots.

About 40 private boats and a dozen or so party boats were at the flats when the City of Long Beach arrived. The few visible sea lions were undoubtedly getting their share of the smorgasbord surrounding the vessels. But the angling was good, too. Strech saw his first fish--about a 6-pound barracuda--go to a sea lion, but he later reeled in a 15-pound yellowtail and even won the boat jackpot.

Protection Reflects a Change in Attitude

To recreational boaters, environmentalists, animal lovers and schoolchildren by the thousands, the California sea lion is much more than a glutton for fish.

It is social. It is playful. It has a face that looks like that of a friendly dog, with long whiskers and big brown eyes. The fact that it has prospered under man’s protection--after decades of being hunted for meat, oil and hides--is a sign of America’s growing appreciation for the role of animals.

San Miguel and San Nicolas islands are the sea lions’ primary rookeries, although other islands are utilized. Male sea lions establish breeding territories there from May to July. Pups are typically born in June. Females mate after pupping and stay through September before abandoning their pups. Males leave after mating and tend to migrate northward, as far as Vancouver. Those that breed at islands off Baja are believed to migrate into and perhaps beyond Southland waters.

It is illegal to kill or harass any marine mammal unless it poses a direct threat to public safety. Violators face maximum terms of five years in jail and maximum fines of $25,000. The term “harassment” basically translates into any act of pursuit, torment or annoyance.

In 1988, Congress granted commercial fishermen the right--under strict guidelines--to kill sea lions as a last resort to protect their gear and their catch. Despite a 1992 legislative proposal by the National Marine Fisheries Service supporting this authority, it was discontinued during the last reauthorization of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1994.

With the act up for another reauthorization, the National Marine Fisheries Service and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission have filed a draft report recommending, among other things, that the authority be reinstated “until such time that effective nonlethal means are developed.”

The report also suggests that a framework be established to “provide procedures for lethal removal of California sea lions or Pacific harbor seals where these pinniped species are impacting [Endangered Species Act] salmonids” and in situations where they conflict with human activities “such as at fishery sites and marinas.”

Naomi Rose, a marine biologist at the Humane Society of the United States, argues that “wildlife shouldn’t have to die so that humans can pursue recreational activities. It’s a little different when we have to share space with wildlife and our needs conflict, but this is not a need--it’s an optional activity for us, whereas the sea lions are eating to live and just taking advantage of an easier way to get prey. They’re victims of their own intelligence.

“Also, shooting is extremely risky to people, as bullets can ricochet off water under the right circumstances. And if the animals aren’t hit cleanly, they can suffer tremendously before dying or stranding. An increase in stranded, wounded, dying sea lions on public beaches would almost certainly be seen. This is a side effect to shooting sea lions that I imagine the recreational fishermen haven’t considered.”

Perhaps realizing this, the fishing industry is focusing on nonlethal deterrents, but so far with little progress.

An Australian firm that has developed a shark repellent using a low-voltage electrical field hopes that the device might also repel marine mammals, but tests are not conclusive. Meanwhile, the most promising device yet, one that uses high-energy pressure pulses to discourage sea lions from getting too close to boats and bait receivers, was recently banned by the California Coastal Commission because it was determined that the pulses inflicted too much pain on the blubbery mammals.