By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
I received an email from someone who lives near the entrance to our home port, Channel Islands Harbor. Her name is Kimberly Kelly, and she attached some pictures she had taken of several sea lions that had horrific wounds from becoming entangled in fishing lines.
There’s a barrier that’s made of rocks that creates an inlet/outlet for boaters to safely navigate their way out to the ocean. Along one section of that wall there’s a bit of sand that the sea lions use as a haul out. We see them all the time on our way in and out to the Channel Islands.
Recreational fishermen use those walls to cast their lines into the water. With so many sea lions swimming nearby, it’s inevitable that they’d come in contact with those lines.
Those lines are strong and just about impossible for any animal to see. Once they become entangled in any way, their natural instinct is to roll and twist and turn. Anything to shake loose of that gear.
Sometimes they get away, other times they aren’t so lucky and get that line wrapped around their bodies several times. If human interaction doesn’t happen immediately, that line starts cutting into its skin.
If that animal is young, and growing, it can die from infection, starvation, or, in a weakened condition, predation by a shark.
See the photo to the right -- it shows you the areas where sea lions come out of the water, so close to the fishermen.
Kimberly has been removing lines on an almost daily basis, amounting to what looks like several thousand feet. But we think there is still a lot of stuff in the water.
On Sunday, September 13th, ODA volunteers Geoff Walsh, Mike Wynd, and I took our small boat out to have a look.
We wanted to see how deep that area was by the walls and determine if the bottom was rocky or sand.
It was a miserable day to be out on the water, as we’ve had nothing but weeks on end of storms and big waves. This day proved no better, and it was raining on top of it all…
But we were determined to assess the situation and see if it would be safe for us to put divers in the water to remove whatever hooks and lines we could find.
We motored up and down the entrance, on both sides of the channel, and found the entire stretch to be sandy. This will make it safer for us to navigate underwater, as the visibility is near zero due to the silt constantly being churned up by passing vessels and wave action.
We are now in the process of getting a permit from the Harbor Master who oversees the harbor, to put divers in the water and remove these deadly hooks and lines. As soon as we can permission, we’ll be out there doing all we can to prevent any more harm to these innocent animals.
Thanks, Kimberly, for making us aware of this issue, and to Alexis Galasso / Salt + Noelle, for letting us use of her photo images!
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