Dead sea lion, and other delicacies

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This week began with a trio of stories that boil down to one basic fact: Humans will combat nature and each other to keep their bellies and wallets full, and this isn’t going to change any time soon. 

The first story comes out of Oregon, where California sea lions — intelligent, opportunistic carnivores, just like people — have been “euthanized” for the apparent crime of eating Chinook salmon, some of which are endangered wild fish trying to enter the Columbia River to spawn. Eleven sea lions were killed last year for the same reason, as their protected status as marine mammals does not keep them safe from state-level requests to kill a few in the name of preserving salmon fisheries which are a multi-million-dollar, tax-payer funded effort.

As CBSNews.com reported Monday: 

[California] sea lions have gobbled salmon forever. But their numbers have soared in recent years, as has the number of those cruising upriver to dine on salmon at Bonneville Dam. Frustrations peaked, especially among fishermen who have watched sea lions snatch salmon right out of their gill nets. The Bonneville crowd of hefty mammals. . .have become the enemy of commercial and sport fisherman, who are allowed to catch and keep hatchery-raised fish, and a concern for conservationists trying to restore migratory runs, since sea lions don’t distinguish between hatchery and wild fish. . .At least three of the upper Columbia River spring salmon runs that pass through the dam are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, most significantly the spring chinook salmon run.

So we — American humans, a collective “we” — are killing a marine mammal, one we saw fit to give legal protection 38 years ago, in order to protect an endangered salmon species, one that we nearly destroyed with hydroelectric systems, so that a multi-million-dollar recovery effort on behalf of commercial fishing (including Native operations), recreational anglers, and the species itself does not suffer further losses, while the hugely excessive by-catch of American commercial fishing in various waters continues. 

I’m not stating opposition or support one way or the other in that sentence above — I’m just stringing that out for a complete illustration of just what a nutty situation we have gotten ourselves into. 

In 2009, CA sea lions at the base of the Bonneville Dam ate 4,489 salmon, according to the CBSNews.com report (how was that number figured out?), while this year, around 470,000 Chinook salmon are expected to enter the river. Saying those numbers hold, the sea lions will gobble close to 0.96% of the spring salmon run this year. That is a level of natural carnivorousness that offends some Americans.

Farther down the west coast, some Americans are offended at another type of carnivore eating marine meat: Human sushi aficionados in California scarfing down what appears to be whale sushi served at a chi-chi Santa Monica joint called Hump, according to a NY Times report this past Monday (link below). 

A crew connected to the makers of the 2009 film The Cove performed an undercover sushi-eating “sting,” in a meal that cost $600 for two, without sake or beer, and spirited away samples of a thick-cut meat for testing in Oregon (site of sea-lion control): 

The samples were sent to Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. Professor Baker said DNA testing there revealed that the samples sent to him were from a Sei whale, which are found worldwide and are endangered but are sometimes hunted in the North Pacific under a controversial Japanese scientific program. “I’ve been doing this for years,” Professor Baker said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Armed with a search warrant, federal officials on Friday [Mar. 5] went searching for evidence from the restaurant, including marine mammal parts as well as various records and documents. The possession or sale of marine mammals is a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and can lead to a year in prison and a fine of $20,000.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act does not apply in Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are a natural resource, their slaughter depicted in the Oscar-winning film The Cove that the Japanese dolphin hunters, on the southeastern island of Honshu, have called “inaccurate and intolerant of other cultures.” 

As National Geographic Daily News reported on Monday: 

In the course of a six-month season, [Japanese] fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about U.S. $500 a dolphin. The fishermen supplement their income by taking about a hundred dolphins alive and selling them for tens of thousands of dollars each to aquariums in Japan, China, South Korea, Iran, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. 

People in Japan have hunted dolphins and their larger cetacean relatives, whales, for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

“Pretty much any edible sea creature has been exploited for food,” said Harvard University anthropologist and Japanese fishing-culture expert Theodore Bestor. Whales and dolphins became ingrained in Japanese food, culture, and religion. The animals were the subjects of celebrations, rituals, and art. Ancient tombs and memorials for whales and dolphins can be found across the country.

Let’s see if all of this can be put into one mash-up sentence: 

In Japan the ancient practice of eating marine mammals continues, and some Japanese decry international criticism of their carnivorous proclivities (while other Japanese agree that killing dolphins and whales is a bad idea), while in California daring American diners hope to eat raw whale while other Americans and American law enforcement carry out operations to stop such dining, while human dining on hatchery-bred Chinook salmon will be partly enabled by the slaughter of California sea lions that also hope to eat salmon as they have for thousands of years past. 

(Update: Hours after I wrote this post, members of the Canadian Parliament ate a seal-meat lunch to “defy animal rightists and the EU ban on imported seal products.” Smart thing to have done that after the Winter Games.) 

Circle of life, folks — a modern circle that involves federal energy policy, industrial-food systems, East-West jingoisms, environmentalism, the film industry, people who don’t want to think about dead sea lions while spending $1,000 on guided angling trips, high-tech gear and vessels, marine theme parks, and the deep deep human belly. 

It surely makes vegetarianism look a lot less messy, until the Free the Broccoli people show up. 

via Oscar Winners Try to Keep Whale Off Sushi Plates – NYTimes.com.