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The National Marine Fisheries Service today moved to protect Washington state's severely depleted steelhead trout stocks from extinction, approving, with conditions, the state's request to limit sea lions preying on the scarce steelhead that pass through Seattle's Ballard Locks to spawn.
The returning steelhead, whose numbers have fallen drastically due to sea lion predation in the past decade, are under consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
In a letter to the state's department of fish and wildlife, Rolland Schmitten, head of the fisheries service, outlined strict conditions recommended by a federally convened task force of scientists, environmentalists, and fish organizations under which the sea lions can be captured and held, and, as a last resort and only in certain cases, killed under new provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Before so-called lethal removal can take place, the state, with oversight from the fisheries service, must ensure all feasible and practical non-lethal removal methods have been exhausted. For example, the state must try to prevent the sea lions from approaching the locks using special sound generating devices that create an acoustic barrier. In addition, the state must try to capture and find temporary holding facilities for sea lions identified as preying on steelhead.
Also, before any lethal removal decision, a sea lion would have to be individually identified as preying on steelhead and the overall sea lion predation rate would have to exceed ten percent of the steelhead run during a seven-day period, the fisheries service said.
In past years, the fisheries service and the state have tried a range of means, all non-lethal, to control sea lion predation, including capturing and relocating the sea lions, installing barriers and modifying water flow at the locks, and trying to remove the sea lions from the locks by the use of such items as rubber-tipped arrows and firecrackers. These efforts did not succeed in deterring the sea lions from preying on wild steelhead trout.
Schmitten said he would immediately make available, on a one-time basis, $120,000 of Congressionally appropriated funds to the state to identify and temporarily hold the sea lions. Last year, Congress appropriated funds for sea lion capture and release, and to study alternatives to address the problem at Ballard Locks.
Last July, Washington's fish and wildlife department asked the fisheries service for permission to lethally remove "nuisance" sea lions.
Washington State's population of California sea lions has grown from occasional sightings in the 1970's to 400-500 currently. Overall, the California sea lion, which is not listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, is growing at a rate of about 10 percent annually and now numbers over 100,000.