Sea Lions May Have ‘Fished Out’ Locks

What had been shaping up as the major animal-rights issue of 1995 in western Washington, activists vs. biologists, pretty much has flopped as political theater. Few sea lions have showed up to feast on steelhead at the Ballard Locks.

It’s possible that there simply aren’t enough steelhead left in that distressed Lake Washington run to entice a sea lion into trouble.

Lake Washington wild steelhead are genetically unique fish that return from the sea to spawn in the lake’s tributaries. Poor ocean conditions of recent years, possible overfishing and declining quality of freshwater habitat have buffeted them badly, along with many other wild stocks. These have been particularly hurt, however, by the need to pass through Ballard Locks to get home.

The locks create a bottleneck. Fish mill in front of them before they’re able to find their way. In recent years they’ve been hammered there by growing numbers of California sea lions.

Historically, sea lions weren’t attracted to Puget Sound.

Their debut in recent years might have to do with the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which prohibited killing or even harassing seals and sea lions. As a result of the act, their populations have expanded dramatically up and down the coast.

Meanwhile, Lake Washington wild steelhead runs have declined from thousands of fish to less than 100. They soon may be extinct.

Last year, Congress amended the act to allow the killing of individual problem animals in certain circumstances, a change made pretty much with Lake Washington in mind. A few months ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle put together a task force of biologists, animalrights activists, anglers and Indian tribes to try to agree on when and how to implement such action.

The group reached no consensus. Animal rightists vowed to block any killing with lawsuits. Somebody sank the Fisheries Service’s sea lion livetrap. One activist handcuffed himself to the salvaged structure and had to be led away.

However, animal-rightists won’t have to throw themselves figuratively in front of the train much longer. Critical damage to the fish already might be done.

From Dec. 5 through mid-March, only 66 fish passed through the fish ladder at the locks. Some of those might have been hatchery steelhead or stray chum salmon.

Since Jan. 1, when most of the passing fish should have been wild steelhead, only 20 have been seen. That’s fewer than in 1994, when counters tallied 27 during the same period and when total escapement to the spawning grounds turned out to be only 70 wild fish.

Frank Urabeck, Trout Unlimited’s representative on the task force, thinks that NMFS ought to force the issue with the rightists this season.

If a judge is going to rule to protect sea lions over steelhead, better we should know it now, he says, than when the remnants of the run might be even smaller yet.