After seals and sea lions were spotted 70 miles up the Cowlitz River last week, anglers, lawmakers and state officials expressed concern for one of Washington’s most precious, most delicate natural resources: Chinook salmon.
Tacoma Public Utilities, which owns the Barrier Dam in Salkum where the pinnipeds (fin-footed mammals) were spotted, reported the creatures hadn’t been seen that far up the river in years.
With that news, Washington Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Benjamin Anderson told The Reflector the agency is researching potential non-lethal deterrence actions for the Cowlitz River, especially near the Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery.
The stinky, barking swimmers have even drawn federal attention as recently as this week.
“We have been hearing about this issue!” wrote Hannah Crook, spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, in an email. “The congresswoman thinks we need to be looking at all tools at our disposal, including lethal and nonlethal management to control pinniped populations and their effects on various salmon/fish species in our waterways.”
With Congress drafting spending bills for next year, Crook said Gluesenkamp Perez asked the Appropriations Committee to use “at least $400K” of their operating budget for more non-lethal pinniped removal technology and “no less than $1 million” for lethal removal.
During the recent Salmon Recovery Conference in Vancouver, new non-lethal deterrents were unveiled which may help the Columbia and its tributaries, whereas previous methods made the issue of pinniped predation on the fish even worse. When “acoustic deterrent devices” were introduced near salmon habitats, she said, sea lions would stay away from the noise. However, they eventually became accustomed to the sound and, worse still, came to associate it with areas more likely to have salmon.
“Sea lions are smart, opportunistic predators, and will stay in an area as long as there is an abundant food source,” Anderson said.
In the past, agencies also tried simply moving sea lions back to warmer waters, only to find them returning to the salmon-abundant Pacific Northwest.
In a recent study by Lummi Nation Fisheries Biologist Zoe Lewis through Western Washington University, it was found that in the nine months between December 2022 and August 2021, Steller sea lions (not including their even more present cousin, California sea lions), consumed 222 tons of Chinook salmon. In data 10 years earlier, the average tonnage consumed in that timeframe was 93, less than half of Lewis’ findings.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act, Anderson said, is almost solely responsible for the abundance of seals and sea lions in Washington. In the Columbia Basin alone, the population has increased from fewer than 500 to more than 4,000 animals in the last decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
At the same time, salmon in the basin have become increasingly endangered.
In 2020, the agency allowed tribes and states to exterminate the creatures, with some caveats.
That change was one of a few pieces of sea lion legislation sponsored by former U.S. Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, and Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon. In a tale previously cited by Herrera Beutler and by Ledig last week, when they started becoming a problem on the Columbia, agencies tried bringing the sea lions back to California.
For those familiar with the taste of spring Chinook, it’s not hard to imagine what happened next. They swam back.
“This year seems to be an unusual year in terms of sea lions,” said NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein, later adding, “Spring chinook below Bonneville (Dam) have been somewhat late, so they may be looking for other options. The state and tribes have the authority to remove sea lions. We don’t have the capacity to trap them.”
Instead, that work falls to Fish and Wildlife. While Anderson said the agency isn’t working to “eradicate” sea lions from any of Washington’s river systems, the goal is to reduce their impacts, particularly where they’re gorging themselves on endangered species act-listed salmon stocks.
Pinnipeds are included in the list of animals the public is encouraged to report to the state online at wdfw.wa.gov/get-involved/report-observations. The website’s location field can be used to include information about potential salmon predation.
