Continued unexpectedly high numbers of chinook salmon crossing Bonneville Dam...

Looks to me that culling 2300 sea lions over the last 3 years on the lower Columbia is having some positive results.

WSFW studies show that the lions consume 3 to 5 adult chinook/day in the Collumbia.

Do the math: 2300 culled lions x 3/day =6900/day saved x 1 month = 207,000/month x a 5 month season (May to Sept) =1,035,000 saved/ season.

May be a little over simplified, but one gets the drift how important a cull is.
 
Looks to me that culling 2300 sea lions over the last 3 years on the lower Columbia is having some positive results.
WSFW studies show that the lions consume 3 to 5 adult chinook/day in the Collumbia.
Do the math: 2300 culled lions x 3/day =6900/day saved x 1 month = 207,000/month x a 5 month season (May to Sept) =1,035,000 saved/ season.
May be a little over simplified, but one gets the drift how important a cull is.

Could the fact that these Chinook Salmon have the least exposure of any to Fish Farm Sea Lice and Disease be part of there success?
 
Matt great point about the seals and sea lions.
Gone fishin...l would love to see data on that. Could it also be due to the fact that they actually have hatchery systems that are well funded? Could it be that all the systems with hatchery supplementation are seeing good runs due to the fact of how many fry they put out? Could it be that the Columbia doesn’t get absolutely wiped out with in river netting?
Could it be that people have finally seen the problem of inriver predation by seals and sea lions?

So many easy fixes that can be done with our fisheries.....
 
I wouldn't be so quick to attribute any additional Chinook to any particular cause. It appears we have a pattern of fish arriving late and in larger numbers than generally forecast. Having said that, I was able to sit in on a webinar presented by Dr. Carl Walters. The scientific evidence associating sea lion population increases to corresponding declining salmon populations is becoming increasingly certain. Many people can stick their heads in the sand in denial, however the evidence is mounting. Sea Lions alone account for an estimated 300,000 tonnes of salmon removals. If this was a single fishery, DFO and others would call it an urgent emergency and take immediate actions to restrict that fishery...but because it's a protected critter, we choose to look the other way. What some people have been saying for a while now is we restricted human removals of these animals, which ignores the fact that First Nations communities pre-contact removed significant numbers of these animals keeping them in balance. Now that we have imposed our cultural values on these communities, stopping these traditional uses there is an imbalance. People need to take off those biased cultural beliefs and accept that humans are also part of the ecosystem and play(ed) a significant role in maintaining balance. The current restrictions on harvest are imposing cultural bias resulting in unanticipated consequences for salmon.
 
I wouldn't be so quick to attribute any additional Chinook to any particular cause. It appears we have a pattern of fish arriving late and in larger numbers than generally forecast. Having said that, I was able to sit in on a webinar presented by Dr. Carl Walters. The scientific evidence associating sea lion population increases to corresponding declining salmon populations is becoming increasingly certain. Many people can stick their heads in the sand in denial, however the evidence is mounting. Sea Lions alone account for an estimated 300,000 tonnes of salmon removals. If this was a single fishery, DFO and others would call it an urgent emergency and take immediate actions to restrict that fishery...but because it's a protected critter, we choose to look the other way. What some people have been saying for a while now is we restricted human removals of these animals, which ignores the fact that First Nations communities pre-contact removed significant numbers of these animals keeping them in balance. Now that we have imposed our cultural values on these communities, stopping these traditional uses there is an imbalance. People need to take off those biased cultural beliefs and accept that humans are also part of the ecosystem and play(ed) a significant role in maintaining balance. The current restrictions on harvest are imposing cultural bias resulting in unanticipated consequences for salmon.
Another issue SHOULD be: An overabundance of Sea Lions or an underabundance of SRKW's; pick one.
 
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