It is no longer a question of whether Puget Sound’s harbor seals are eating salmon in significant numbers. Some experts fear that seals may be hampering efforts to recover the threatened Puget Sound Chinook and, in turn, the endangered southern resident killer whales.
How to manage seal and sea lion populations — including the potential lethal removal of animals — is the focus of much discussion, according to Michael Schmidt, deputy director of Long Live the Kings, a group focused on environmental restoration, research and education. But it is just one of many concerns in the long-term effort to recover salmon and steelhead, he said.
Seals and sea lions are protected under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Consequently, extensive scientific evidence must be provided before federal agencies consider actions to control or reduce their numbers, noted Schmidt, who is the U.S. coordinator for the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project. That project, which involves U.S. and Canadian researchers, is investigating why so many salmon are dying in marine waters.
In August, three Northwest states and six tribes were issued a federal permit to kill up to 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions along a 180-mile stretch of the Columbia River. The five-year authorization followed a 2018 amendment to the federal law. As a result, it is no longer necessary to observe and identify individual sea lions responsible for eating threatened and endangered salmon downstream of McNary Dam.
Unlike the situation on the Columbia River, where problem animals are a small portion of the coastal population, the threat in Puget Sound appears to be the overall seal and sea lion population, which grew rapidly after the 1972 passage of the marine mammal law.
Experts throughout the region acknowledge that scientific questions regarding Salish Sea harbor seals — and to a lesser extent sea lions — must be sufficiently answered before population controls are implemented. Answers are needed, they say, not only to meet federal requirements but also to protect the Puget Sound ecosystem from unintended consequences.
According to recent reports by the Washington State Southern Resident Orca Task Force and the University of British Columbia Marine Mammal Research Unit, certain questions must be answered with greater certainty as part of any plan to control seal or sea lion populations.
