Wayne Johnson. We need you.

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littleriver
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Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by littleriver » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:57 am

Not sure if anyone has been following the california gray whale kill up in the straits but the makah tribal member who led the hunt is named "Wayne Johnson".


I am opposed to mismanaged fish and wildlife harvest of any kind but certainly not to the harvest and that includes whales and seals. Grey whales were in trouble a few decades ago but their numbers have greatly rebounded to over 20,0000 as I recall and there is some good evidence to suggest that they are starting to "overgraze" their pastures. I think the Makahs should be allowed to take a few every year and the other tribes along the pacific shore with a cultural tie to this kind of harvest should be given an allocation also.


But let's not stop at the gray whales. There are way more than 25,000 california sea lions off the coast now and estimates run as high as 8,000 entering the columbia river to feast on salmon during the annual runs. I say let's put a "There's a new sheriff in town" badge on Wayne and get him working on an official thinning of our seal and sea lion populations. The animals need not be wasted as there's a good market for the carcasses in China (canada harvests over 50,000 seals per year in the maritime provinces for export to china) and the revenue would certainly be a good thing for the participating tribes.
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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by A9 » Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:31 pm

You are crazy littleriver. While I do agree that they (indian tribes) should have their right to hunt whales and seals for CULTURAL purposes and do it in a RESPONSIBLE fashion, their is no reason to let Wayne be in charge of ripping .50 cal machine gun bullets at Sea lions and seals. I hope you aren't applauding him for what he did. Completely irresponsible, not to mention the state and federal government will be keeping their eye so closely on the Makahs and their quota's for fish harvest they will have no room for error cause 5 idiot tribe members decided to go out on a limb and hunt a whale cause they felt like it.

He basically said he had whale hunting in his blood and it was time to kill one. He did it a mile off shore, and did it with NO authorization from Makah trible members or the state or FEDERAL government. Completely screwed over the Makah tribe, and now the Makah leaders are having to go to Washington D.C. to try and persuade the federal govt that they didn't OK this hunt or have anything to do with it.

So you want to pardon Wayne, I'm assuming, and give him a boat and a gun to shoot up the sea lions, JUST so FISHERMEN can have better runs of fish instead of sea lions being able to eat and LIVE, who of course, eat salmon as a main couse for their diet. Circle of life buddy, salmon have lived with sea lions for thousands of years, and humans have had a much greater impact then their natural predators.

Pretty selfish to say kill the sealions. "Let's kill sea lions so runs are better so we (fishermen) can harvest more..." is basically what you mean, whether directly or not. In a fair world for all species, sea lions would want us shot so we wouldn't build dams and harvest our share of salmon so they could have more salmon to be able to eat and survive and have offspring.

It's pretty ignorant to forget what human's have done to populations of salmon. And it's pretty easy for people like you to be selfish and blind-minded to blame sealions for poor salmon runs and say "shoot the sealions" and believe that that is a feasible and positive solution. Wake up people, slaughtering sea lions isn't going to rebound our crashing stocks of salmon, it's us realizing that we messed up and changes need to be made. Predator and prey (sealions and salmon) have lived together for thousands of years, but OUR recent (past 400 years) human impact has had a bigger difference then sea lions just trying to live and survive in the wild by consuming salmon.
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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by skimpy » Mon Sep 10, 2007 7:28 pm

AMEN, Sam Kafelafish, AMEN. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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Post by A9 » Mon Sep 10, 2007 7:38 pm

Thanks for the backup skimpy. JUST LIKE THAT IMAGE: Predator and prey live together. We can't play god and start emptying clips into sealions for our benefit.
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Post by shawn » Mon Sep 10, 2007 7:55 pm

I agree with Sam on this one.The seals and seallions were here way before us.If you look at the impact we(humans)have had on all of our resources instead of ignoring what we done we need to accept what's going on and make changes to benefit everyone.And stop crying foul everytime something does a little bit better on the water that day than us.Shooting them is not the answer.When the runs where really good you didn't hear a single word about seals eating to much fish.Now it's all the rage to blame everything else but ourselves.:-k
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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by littleriver » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:24 pm

Very well stated Sam. You are getting much better at putting your arguments into words and I compliment you for that.



Your points are very valid and well written.


I will counter as follows.



The first europeans came to this part of the world some centuries ago to hunt seals and sea lions. The russians (True russians are decendants of a viking tribe call the "Rus") finally arrived in the aleutians, after being delayed for many centuries by the mongols, in the 17th century. There is still evidence of this presence in the Orthodox churches you will see if you visit Alaska and there is even a Byzantine church somewhere in olympia. Byzantine refers to the eastern portion of the roman empire as it survived until the sacking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in the mid 15th century. The first leaders of what we now know as Russia were fascinated by Constantinople and adopted othodoxy (or eastern Roman Catholicism) as their official religion even before they gained supremacy over the mongols in the 17th century and the word Czar is russian for "Caesar".

The russians were also here to hunt seals and sea lions and were quite brutal with the natives.


So hunting seals and seal lions and gray whales is a part of our heritage we cannot deny or run away from.



Admittedly the hunting went a bit too far and sea mammal populations were in serious decline in the first half of the 20th century....


However, several decades of protection have changed all that and we live in a new world of sea mammal abundance.


Left to their own devices all wild species will multiply until they out strip their food supplies and then populations will stabilize or collapse. Typically the population grows past the point where stabilization is an option and ultimately "collapse" becomes a reality. This cyclical nature of species populations was undoubtedly a fact of life for sea mammals before the europeans and the rus arrived and we are probably geting to the point where we will see these cycles start to manifest themselves again in modern times.


I was being a little facetious in recommending Wayne as the primary enforcer but that is driven by the extreme frustration that comes from watching anadromous species (ie. salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon) management insanity for so many decades. It started in 1975 with the Boldt decision and things seem to have gotten worse every year since.


But the bottom line is this. Seals and Sea Lion and Gray Whale populations have recovered to a point where they have outstripped their available forage base. It's time to start looking at options for managing these populations in a responsible manner. Allowing tribal hunters allotments to harvest reasonable numbers of these species is a great way to achieve this end.
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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by A9 » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:35 pm

Predator/Prey have a very common coexistence. When numbers of prey are up, predators will thus multiply because of the abundant supply and they will produce offspring, who will also benefit off the good amounts of food available. When the population of predators catches up to prey, you are right, their becomes a problem. Not enough food for a big predator population. Well then what happens, the prey population (salmon) will decrease, and then following that, the predator population will decrease because of the lack of food available. Soon, the PREDATOR population gets too low and then all of a sudden, the cycle is back to start. Their is less predation on the salmon and they will thrive and rebuild their stocks and they will multiply, then be followed with the increase number of sea lions. It's nature, and I don't think we are in any place to try and manage the circle of life with machine guns. I don't think they (salmon) will be ravaged and decimated to the point of serious endangerment or extinction by the sea lions. They have lived with this circle of predator/prey for much longer then we have affected them, and they were here in GREAT numbers before we started messing stuff up.

I do agree with you that management hasn't been considered good to ANY degree, but we CANNOT point the finger at the WDFW or the Federal government for the poor salmon/steelhead/sturgeon returns in the past 40 years. We can't build dams and continue to screw up our environment by microwaving ourselves (global warming if you didn't catch on) and etc....

I will post this now, and update it if I find the diagram of the predator/prey cycle...Nevermind here it is

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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by shawn » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:44 pm

Littleriver you touched on something wich is very true and most people don't know about that's the Judge Boldt decision,wich states if I remember correctly that native tribes are intitled 50% of the fishable qouta.Wich is alot for one set of people to have.I have seen so many nets sitting on the beach during low tide and unchecked for days at a time.Wich is a direct result of that desicion.
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Post by A9 » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:57 pm

Yea shawn I've seen some really nasty looking fish sitting in nets that are unchecked for several days and the fish get taken when the indians DO get around to doing it.

The thing that disturbs me the most is I saw this happening RIGHT below the bluff where the Clearwater Casino sits, which is run by the Suquamish tribe. My grandmother has a place about a mile down the beach and this time of year, you can clearly see several sets of nets, which are most likely Indian nets, and they are right below the casino, and their is a stairway down to the water. I'm hoping the Suquamish tribe ain't throwing those in the casino kitchen and putting em on plates.....
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Post by shawn » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:18 am

Sam Kafelafish wrote:Yea shawn I've seen some really nasty looking fish sitting in nets that are unchecked for several days and the fish get taken when the indians DO get around to doing it.

The thing that disturbs me the most is I saw this happening RIGHT below the bluff where the Clearwater Casino sits, which is run by the Suquamish tribe. My grandmother has a place about a mile down the beach and this time of year, you can clearly see several sets of nets, which are most likely Indian nets, and they are right below the casino, and their is a stairway down to the water. I'm hoping the Suquamish tribe ain't throwing those in the casino kitchen and putting em on plates.....
Wow that's weird because the nets I am talking about is managed by the same tribe but they are over in Sinclair Inlet between Bremerton and Port Orchard.About two weeks ago while fishing by there,we seen what appeared to be a piece of drift wood but on further inspection it was a dead seal still wrapped up in there fishing nets.They took enough time out of there day to cut net around and set it adrift.I did some calling and it's funny WDFW told me the nets aren't really regulated by them,they said each tribe has a department wich oversees there own tribes fishing.Wich struck me as who's there to keep them honest and it turns out the ones do all the netting is also in charge of policeing themselves.Sounds pretty crooked to me.
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Post by A9 » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:42 am

Yea they do get to take more then their own quota allows because they do whatever they want. They would rather harvest more fish now and make more immediate money then take the quota they are supposed to abide by...
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Post by Drewp » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:42 pm

Just a question, but since humans are responsible for the building of damns, and the damns seem to give seals/sea lions an unfair advantage in consuming large amounts of salmon, don't we then have a responsiblity to provide the salmon with protection? Relocating the seals and sea lions has been tried and doesn't work. So do we just let the seals and sea lions feast? I don't forsee the Ballard Locks getting removed to help salmon escape seals and sea lions on their way to spawn.

When a bear or cougar decides to eat a human, most often they are euthanized. If that were us getting eaten by seals, there wouldn't be a debate on this issue (I know, that's quite a stretch of an analogy).
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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by cavdad45 » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:10 pm

I can't hold back any longer.

1. I really don't have a dog in the fight as far as whaling goes. My only issue is, why are the Makah's the only people worldwide who have that priviledge? I have plenty of Norwegian blood in my veins and for centuries whaling was as much a part of the life and economy of that society, so why can't I take a stab at it?

2. Sealions are out of control!!! Why are they protected? Their numbers far exceed populations ever recorded in history. I live near the Columbia and Willamette Rivers where sealions have become a major nuisance, but worse a predatory nuisance. We have so many "Endangered" and "Threatened" species of salmon that these "Protected" animals regularly kill. Can we do anything about it? No. Will the government do anything about it? When has the government done anything other than make things worse?

3. I agree that the influence of man has offset nature, but we are here and as far as I know, most of us want to remain on planet Earth. So instead of complaining about what man has so ignorantly ruined, we should look to common sense solutions to real problems affecting our natural resources.

4. I believe that sealions should be hunted like most other species of wildlife to control their exploding populations and be effectively managed for the good of their own out of balance species. We do it with elk, deer, birds, cougar, bear, and various furbearing animals that we trap. I am not talking about wanton shooting of these critters, but effective game management. Just common sense.

5. Am I an expert? No. This is just the opinion of someone who loves the natural resources in the Northwest.

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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by lskiles » Tue Sep 11, 2007 2:11 pm

mmmmm...sealion jerky and a comfy rug for my dog!

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RE:Wayne Johnson. We need you.

Post by cavdad45 » Tue Sep 11, 2007 3:16 pm

lskiles wrote:mmmmm...sealion jerky and a comfy rug for my dog!
Actually a waterproof rug! :geek:

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