Spring seems to be the time of year that encounters get physical. In March of 2004, 19-year-old Ray Dushkin Jr. was pulled from the deck of his grandfather’s boat in King Cove harbor on the Alaska Peninsula, and in April of 1987 a sea lion grabbed a fisherman by the rear as he was sitting on the rail of a boat in Kodiak harbor and pulled him under the water. Neither man was seriously injured.
The Petersburg Pilot reports that the Petersburg harbormaster and National Marine Fisheries Service are teaming up to try to make the harbor less attractive to sea lions, mostly by eliminating the food source that attracts them in the first place. Petersburg has a law that prohibits feeding sea lions, but not one that prohibits dumping fish parts into the harbor, something that NMFS and the Petersburg harbormaster are working to change.
In Homer, harbor personnel used “scare shells” to frighten sea lions off the floats, and a combination of education and fines to keep people from feeding the sea lions to get the situation under control.
Deputy harbormaster Bryan Hawkins said that constant harassment did the trick. “We just antagonized the heck out of them every chance we got. Every time we saw them hauled out we’d run them off the floats, and every time we saw them in the harbor we’d shoot these things at them.”
The aggressive tactics became a necessity several years ago when a particularly large bull sea lion made himself at home in the Homer harbor, chasing people and dogs.
“He was the one who had really established himself here before we got with the program of antagonizing them,” Hawkins said. “He was just obnoxious. He would charge people, make these false charges down the dock, this big lumbering beast. He would challenge you, say ‘this is my dock, get off my dock.’ And of course we did.”
The big bull never made physical contact with anyone, but he did scare plenty of people, according to Hawkins.
“There was one incident where he jumped out of the water at a woman and a child,” Hawkins said. “He jumped up on the float in front of them, and they were back-pedaling, trying to get out of his way, and they fell down. He didn’t attack them, per se, but he jumped up in front of them. That was the only time that anyone had anything physical happen to them.”
Hawkins said harbor employees worked with NMFS to enforce the “No Feeding” rules. “We would just talk to people that we saw throwing food to the sea lions,” he said. “There’s a city ordinance and there’s a federal one, just inform them that they’re making a mistake and they could be fined for it.”
Sometimes talking was not enough, Hawkins said. “Every once in awhile there would be somebody that was hard-headed, and NMFS would fine them. They issued a few citations over a two- or three-year period. That was the biggest thing we did to keep them out.”
Hawkins said that sea lions still cruise through the harbor, but are not allowed to establish territory there any more.
He also said the large bull apparently met a natural demise. “He went away for the spring breeding season and never came back. They do have a high mortality rate.”
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She can be reached at cristy-fry@excite.com.
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