Recovery plan identifies fishing as threat to sea lions

ANCHORAGE — A 325-page plan issued Wednesday for Alaska sea lions lists dozens of actions needed for the animals to recover.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) recovery plan is a good one, but also is notable for what it lacks, said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

For example, the plan does not call for increased regulation to curtail the Bering Sea fishery, even though it identifies the fishery as a potentially large threat to sea lions in the competition for food, he said.

The plan also treats too lightly the fact that sea lions are disappearing from the islands off San Francisco and fails to plan effectively for the effects of climate change, he said.

"It is a status-quo plan, not a recovery plan," Cummings said. "Given the sea lions' habitat is already changing as dramatically as any place on Earth, you can't talk about the future, which a recovery plan does, without squarely addressing what that will look like 30 years from now."

The plan looks at the eastern and western populations of Steller's sea lions in Alaska. It will cost more than $430 million for the western stock to fully recover, the plan says. The recovery cost for the eastern stock is about $1 million.

The plan reports no substantial threats to the eastern stock stretching from Southeast Alaska to California. Those are increasing at approximately 3 percent a year.

The problems are with the western population, extending from the eastern Gulf of Alaska to the western Aleutian Islands and beyond. Those sea lions are listed as endangered.

The overall plan is a good one, Cummings said. It provides a strong analysis of the impacts of commercial fishing on sea lions and properly identifies fishing as a significant potential threat, he said.

NMFS held to that conclusion despite intense pressure from the fishing industry to weaken the link between commercial fishing and the decline of sea lions, he said.

While not calling for more, the plans says the current level of fishery-management measures to protect sea lions should be maintained. It also calls for a program to assess the impact of commercial fishing, as well as the threat coming from killer whales and climate change — all described as having potentially high impacts on the animals.

Lisa Rotterman, Steller's sea lion coordinator for NMFS in Anchorage, said the plan clearly identifies what is needed for sea lions to recover. It also is clear in the need for more research not only on the status of sea lions but also potential threats, she said.

The agency, which last issued a recovery plan in 1992, said it reviewed more than 8,000 public comments and consulted a broad variety of experts in coming up with the revised plan.