It is fricin’ impressive to watch a herd of sea lions gorging during a salmon run. They catch a full grown female salmon by the gut, eat the egg sack and sling the carcass aside to go after another. These are very large animals and when you get large numbers of them swarming around the lower end of a fish ladder when the salmon are spawning they truly wreak havoc on the run.
They have tried everything at Bonneville Dam to control these animals, many of them are not healthy enough to go to a zoo and there ain’t much of a market for seal steaks here in the Portland Metro area....although I’m sure there is someone around here who would be willing to make all natural soap out of real organic seal blubber.....
I wish one of the Indian tribes would claim some kind of unlimited tribal hunting right to the damned things, then we would have no sea lion problems at all.
Love to see them harpoon one from a jonboat.....
Yep, that's exactly what they do, I've seen videos of them doing it.
Sea lions are not dumb animals. There are many people who would scream bloody murder at what I'm going to suggest but that's too bad. Fish & Wildlife should shoot a few and leave them in the river to warn the remaining ones that it's an unhealthy environment, it may or may not work but it's worth a try.