OLYMPIA

Olympia man fined for shooting, killing sea lion

A 55-year-old Olympia man has been fined $7,000 for fatally shooting a California sea lion on the Lewis River last spring, the National Marine Fisheries Service said Wednesday.

The fine is one of the largest ever brought in the Northwest under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Investigators were tipped by witnesses to the April shooting in Woodland, near Vancouver. The man, who was not identified by the Fisheries Service, told agents he shot the sea lion because it was eating young salmon and interfering with fishing.

To bad he got caught!

what a shame, the man should be considered a hero!

While I hate to have them steal "my" salmon and I wish the Orcas would vist more frequently, I do not condone willfully breaking the law. He knew the law he must be ready to pay the price. Do you teach your kids to obey only the laws with wich they agree?

Papa Slap is right!

Since PETA is convinced that fish feel pain and suffering, think of the thousands of fish that were spared by sacrificing that one animal.

:p

I don't condone breaking the law.

I knew I would get arise from the crowd.

PETA could have killed the seal in defense of the fishies and probably gotten away with it.

Personally I think that the seal (marine animal) gave up his rights (lol) as a marine animal when he entered the freshwater habitat! I guess that the guy should have made a citizens' arrest on the seal for tresspassing, let alone the harassment of what most likely were returning salmon. And I am sure that the poor defenseless fury little whiskered brown eyed seal wasn't checking adapus fins while on his last fishing trip.

Law of the lands... I'm with surecatch on this one.

It's those same aholes that are shooting sea lions that are also shooting hawks and eagles and blaming them for the loss of upland game birds...Some folks are just stupid!

Besides being illegal, it puts a bad name on sport fisherman. I'll turn in anybody I see that does that.

What a freakin' loser! He should lose his fishing privilages for good!... and maybe his house.

"poor defenseless fury little whiskered brown eyed seal "

I know this was in jest, but until you see a harbor seal chase a stupid human around in circles in a confined space with it's canines bared, you just don't know how funny this is!

Not to mention the mouthful of teeth on a 700lb. Cali. sea lion!

You're right Twig! The general reputation of sportsmen continues to decline as this sort of criminal activity is condoned. Particularly in easily monitored and then-quoted places like this and other internet bulletin boards.

Let the indians hunt sea lions, that will wipe out 99% of the population. ooooooo, I'm gonna get crap for that one.....

I was down at Dash Point pier a few weeks ago, and one of the guys had a wrist rocket that he said he would use if the seals got too close to the fish being reeled in. I believed him, too. Something has to be done about seals and sea lions that hang around docks. Seems like every dock has a few resident ones that just love pinching the fish off your line.

they shoot whales ? the Makah

A few ceremonial seals.......... never mind let them go on and multiply and take over what used to be moorage sights for fishing boats and eat the salmon , wild and hatchery, paddle your kayaks round and take pictures of the little sweethearts, close the hatcheries, harass the orcas to the point that they never want to come into Puget Sound because everytime they do they are surrounded by helicopters and pontoon boats with little kids screaming about.

there used to be a balance in nature and it is all fricking screwed up. I drove by the Kalama snag fest today and it probably doesn't really matter what the fury little creatures do, because if they don't destroy it the the two legged pink skinned ones will!

Just got a call from a dude coming in from a tuna trip....."197 tunas, had to quit early cause we couldn't carry any more, want some if not I'm giving them away down here"

Went fishing in Mexico about 15 yrs ago they killed everything we hooked now the fishies are even smaller than before.

went on a bottom fishing trip out of westport about 5 yrs ago they killed everything we hooked, might small fillets....."were are all those big red snappers I used to catch as a kid ?"

frig it, protect the seals , at least they fish to live

and they will live for awhile, until they are overpopulated and the food is gone and desease
and starvation take their toll.

how's that for a drunken tirate? the M's are making me crazy!!

See if you feel the same way when you fish all day, get one fish, and a seal comes and steals it off your line. Very same thing happened to me not too long ago. I was livid. If I'd have had a gun, I'd have shot that ******* right then and there.

I hear they smoke up real good.

He should have waited till the 4th of july.

Its kind of funny that the indians can shoot seals and sea lions for interfering with there fishing, but when one of us does it for the same reason it is a federal crime and people start saying how it gives sportfishermen a bad name.

Just another case of government sponsored racism.

Well, as is all too common with us "Human" animals anymore, there is no common sense rule for anything....
Seals have their place in this world, as do all animals. But unfortunately we do not manage them. Their only natural enemy anymore is the Great Whites and Orcas. We have, in trying to save them, inadvertantly created a species whose population is exploding. The PETA crowd has made it where they cannot even be controlled when all other options have failed. Remember the Ballard locks incident, when the F&W guys could not even shoot them with rubber tipped arrows to discourage them from eating the last few wild Steelhead returning to Lake Washington? That is so rediculous, but try to convince the PETA people otherwise.
A seal (or Sealion) has no business being that far up the Columbia, and I have seen many of them in the last ten years up at Bonneville.
As with the Ballard locks seals, if they find an easy meal (like fish ladders), they will stay indefinetely...... I do not condone the breaking of the law, but something has to be done to control their numbers.
After years of watching the seagulls feast on smolts at McNary dam, I could not believe it when I was fishing and heard what I thought were M80's going off and saw the Gulls dropping from the sky. Seems ODFW was blasting them with a 12 ga.... Must have seen over 200-300 or them floating down the river that afternoon. Called them up to find out what was up, and they said that they had tried everything and the gulls were used to all the scare tactics and they had no choice if they wanted to save the smolts. I think the same approach needs to be implemented with the seals..... Don't wipe them out, but control their numbers....

MC

If you get them in tide water they can be ok, but once sea lions get up into the rivers they start to turn dark and are only good for the smoker.

but once sea lions get up into the rivers they start to turn dark and are only good for the smoker.


counted somewhere between120 and 150 of them at the mouth of the nisqually last week