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Column: Hungry sea lions compete for dwindling salmon

Shuswap Outdoors by Hank Shelley
16325690_web1_Hank-Shelley

Oh my gosh, look at that!

They’re smart, adaptive and major predators on salmon and now on white sturgeon, both on the Willamette River in Oregon and at the Bonneville dam.

Big, powerful Stellar sea lions that is.

They can be viewed on YouTube attacking and killing even oversized sturgeon. Hard to believe. Another example of what is transpiring on declining salmon species and the rebuilding efforts for sturgeon in a complicated underwater battle of existence.

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Although the feds have announced $1.48 million for enhancement and rebuilding chinook stocks through grants and hatcheries, and also to help the southern pod of 73 Orcas, will all that money help in the long run?

There are many factors involved, starting with climate change and predator numbers when fry reach rearing lakes to spend a year in bays, growing until they migrate on their journey to the ocean.

For example: On low snowpack seasons in tributary streams east of Enderby (Ashton Creek for one), where salmon fry were trapped in pools and then transported to the Shuswap River many times. I’ve watched swarms of fry drift with the current at Mara while showing farmers helpful ways to screen their intake pumps from sucking fry onto their corn fields. Yet, when angling off the mouth of the river at Mara, hundreds of medium-to-large mountain pikeminnow gathered there, to inhale the thousands of salmon fry. Those poor tiny fry don’t have much chance to become adults in four years and return.

DNA testing of Salmon River chinook show little returns, as those same fish are apprehended by Alaska commercial boats, similar to halibut. The Zeballos River flows beneath the lodge my son owns (Island Tides), but the river is so low many folks there are concerned about fry trapped in pools returning to the ocean. Here, seals and sea lions wait (like in fall) when it’s a smorgasboard. Off of Powell River up the coast, sea lions consume, it’s estimated, 620 tons of salmon a season. Overall then, I guess we will have to wait and see how closures for sport, aboriginal, commercial fisheries help conserve salmon stocks on the lower half of the coast, including the Fraser River.

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The sport fishing industry alone brings in $1.8 billion a year to the economy. For more on the whole situation, there is a Fishing BC app on Apple/Android through DFO/Sport fishing Institute of B.C.


@SalmonArm
newsroom@saobserver.net

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