By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
PHOTO FROM MARIN SCUBA CLUB
A playful juvenile sea lion
As a 15-year volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center, I was appalled to find this 1921 letter to the Editor of the Sausalito News. Note that some of the writer’s claims are unsubstantiated and dubious. He began by claiming, “Some time ago I wrote I article on this subject, which was printed in a S. F. daily and received many communications very complimentary and expressing their views as being in accord with mine. But nothing has been done.” Then he continued:
“Why Is it that we do not have all kinds of game fish in our bay and tributary waters? There is only one answer, and that is the great menace of the sea lions. Very few people are aware of the fact that a sea lion will eat and destroy more than his own weight in a single day [really?] and the game fish, viz.: salmon, bass, barracuda, yellow tail and even the tuna are their prey. Most of those fish never get a chance to enter our waters on account of the herds of sea lions that infest Seal Rock at the entrance to our bay. For when the schools of salmon, striped bass and all other kinds of game fish come nosing up or down the coast looking for such as our bay to enter and go to the tributaries to spawn, the sea lions on the rocks, through their instinct, scent them miles away and they get together and go after them in great numbers and what they do not kill, eat and destroy, scatter to go elsewhere to spawn and never venture entering again.
“Thus we are deprived of not only the market value of the fish but the sport of catching them. Go to any hotel in the city and ask any tourist which he would rather do, go out to the Cliff House and look at those ugly brutes on the rocks or pack a rod and line and spend a day fishing for those fish that we have got, or be served with some of them for his meals at reasonable prices, and see what the answer will be.
“I have written to the Game Commission upon this subject and they say that in San Francisco there now exists an old ordinance protecting the sea lions on Seal Rock only. Now I suggest they repeal the same and give a bounty for them, also pay men to shoot and exterminate them. They are doing that up north. They have no commercial value. Why not get rid of them? I have studied this subject for over 33 years and my observations prompted me to write this article. Ask any fisherman what they do to his nets. No one can make even an approximate estimate as to the damage a sea lion can do to the fish industry. “With the extermination of the sea lion we will have all kinds of game fish in our waters at all times of the year. Let's us start a slogan: ‘Kill the Sea Lion and protect the fish.’” C. A. McNeill, Tiburon, Calif.
Thankfully, just the opposite occurred. After being hunted nearly to extinction by Russian fur traders in the 19the century, California sea lions were eventually afforded safeguards, culminating in the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. That legislation makes it illegal to harass, feed, hunt, capture or kill sea lions, seals, otters and other marine mammals. Today, sea lions are common throughout California and many parts of Oregon and Washington. Sadly, the National Marine Fisheries Service still allows locals to lethally remove sea lions preying on threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in Washington’s Columbia River basin.
On the other hand, our nearby Marine Mammal Center has rescued over 23,000 sick, starving or injured marine mammals, mostly California sea lions, northern elephant seals and Pacific harbor seals.
The colony of “ugly brutes” at Seal Rock, whose ancestors so offended Mr. McNeill, migrated to Pier 39 following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and became a major tourist attraction. Today, we treasure the biodiversity off our coast and in the Bay, and as apex predators, sea lions help to keep it all in balance.