|
And you think you have a Seal problem....
Newport's War on Sea Lions
The nighttime barking was bad enough. Then they sank a sailboat. But the law is on their side.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
Think of them as amphibious sumo wrestlers. A pack of rowdy sea lions has invaded Newport Harbor, sinking a boat, thrashing docks and — with their cacophony of barking — turning residents into sleepless zombies.
In a scene that has played out up and down the West Coast, the whiskered creatures are charming tourists but exasperating local officials, who are studying a far-flung set of strategies to thwart the federally protected mammals.
On Wednesday, the Newport Beach Harbor Commission debated the situation, which has taken on added urgency since 18 sea lions piled onto a 37-foot sailboat and sank it over Labor Day weekend.
The sheriff's Harbor Patrol has also been inundated with noise complaints.
"A barking dog doesn't hold a candle to this. It's like 40 barking dogs — in surround sound," grumbled Balboa Peninsula resident Darci Schriber.
For relief, she and her neighbors contemplated painting a small electric boat to look like an orca, complete with piped-in whale sounds to scare off the sea lions.
Seattle tried a similar plan nine years ago after sea lions raided Puget Sound to devour endangered steelhead trout at a fish ladder. The fiberglass whale, dubbed "Fake Willy," was submerged nearby as an "aquatic scarecrow."
It didn't work. Neither did rubber bullets, firecrackers or underwater speakers blasting high-pitched sounds. At one point, mammal wranglers captured several of the sea lions and deported them to an island near Santa Barbara. The lions were back within a week, said Doyle Hanan, a former California Fish and Game official who is working with federal researchers on gadgets to deter the animals, which tip the scales at 600 to 800 pounds each.
Sea lions have always been known for their ingenious and sometimes ornery antics. But this summer, Newport Beach officials noticed a dramatic influx. Nobody knows why the creatures are muscling into the area, but the U.S. sea lion population has boomed over three decades, since Congress made it a crime to kill them.
Roughly 400,000 sea lions now swim off West Coast shores, and 100,000 to 200,000 more ply the waters of Baja California — so many that anglers complain that the sea lions gobble up a good part of their catch.
In Newport Harbor, boat owners have barricaded their swim steps with chairs and kayaks. And residents of Balboa Peninsula have resorted to squirt guns and sleeping pills to cope with the noisy animals.
Schriber and her husband recently paddled their dinghy toward a group of sea lions lounging on a catamaran and shooed them away by splashing water in the mammals' faces.
"These animals hate to get wet," said marine mammal biologist Monica DeAngelis of the National Marine Fisheries Service. "It's kind of funny."
Monterey officials exploited that phobia a few years ago after 1,500 sea lions swarmed the waterfront, sinking or damaging 40 boats and stinking up docks with vomit and feces.
City workers and criminals serving community service terms formed 24-hour sea lion patrols, armed with giant squirt guns to scare off the lumbering intruders.
Elsewhere along the Pacific coast, sea lions have attacked swimmers, chomped bodyboards and even yanked people off boats.
In Alaska, according to one news account, "19-year-old Ray Dushkin Jr. was working on his grandfather's fishing boat in King Cove when a sea lion leaped from the water and grabbed the seat of the young man's coveralls in its teeth. In a flash, he was pulled overboard." Dushkin escaped with a small scrape on his buttocks.
Not long ago, humans had the upper hand in this battle of man and beast. But after California sea lions were hunted nearly to extinction, Congress passed the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which made it illegal to kill, injure or — in most circumstances — even harass sea lions and other pinnipeds.
Lawmakers never envisioned that the law would work so well, said Matt Streit, a spokesman for the House Resources Committee. In response, a bill has been drafted to allow cities to use nonlethal methods to repel sea lion incursions.
The last time the feds intervened was 1996, when officials ordered the execution of a three-pack of sea lions named Hondo, Bob and Big Frank for decimating Seattle's steelhead trout population.
|
Hybrid Mode
