The trolling family I know were on the water along with many hundreds more from April 15-October from the 50s to the early 80s.
Most packed guns to take care of following pinipeds looking for an easy meal.
Captain Hook do you think the big spike in numbers is due in part to the big drop in trollers and the very reduced seasons? Or are ocean conditions in California causing mass migrations of sea lions northward?
I don't have a theory for all the seals in the Gulf. Not sure how many of them were ever killed off.
Good points tubber....
Yes , we used to take care of it ourselves in some areas...
but also the government had a bounty of $5.xx a nose when i was a kid.
Which was a waste of a beautiful animal .
Regardless of there not being a market , it is a valuable product and we only have to change our
ways of thinking to accept wearing or using the skin,meat,bones etc. same as we do a cow or?
I have never seen Sea Lion population explosion such as what we are seeing now ...ever.
And yes, i believe is due to California protection and the population boom down there.
animals followed their nose along the food trail to our coast.
It also coincided with our coast come back of huge schools of Sardines. hmmm???
Lots of safe log booms to sit on and huge schools of herring and anchovies, salmon.
No hunters and protected by Ottawa.