It's the article you don't want to read. I came across this
article and saw three tiny baby Sea Lions in a cage travelling to
the Pacific Marine Mammal Centre to get the care they need after
being stranded due to malnutrition. The Problem? Their mother's
cannot produce the amount of milk necessary to feed them enough to
grow the fat they need to survive in the cool waters of the Pacific
Ocean. Climate Change is thought to be one of the culprits of this
malnutrition as it is forcing the sea lion's prey species to move
North into cooler waters. In addition, the sea lion's favourite
prey, the sardine, has undergone a collapse in population in 2012
due to over fishing.
What will happen to the Sea Lion babies that I saw in the
article's image? The Pacific Marine Mammal Centre will bring them
back to health, but will eventually have to release them and that
is a problem. Lack of food source and rapidly changing waters
cannot be good for this sea lion population.
I do have a solution for the government. Take a listen to the
podcast to find out what that solution is and let me know if you
agree.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session150
welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 151 what's up everybody today on the show we're going to continue to follow what's happening on the west coast of north america where baby sea lines this year have been uh caught i guess stranded and are dying they're very malnutrition um they have uh obviously from lack of food and they're sick and the pacific marine mammal center is almost at capacity and trying to take these these pups in and they're trying to put them back and we're going to figure out what's going to happen when they put them back uh just based on what's happening in the pacific this year in the past years and what's been happening with baby sea lines and sea line population in general uh so stay tuned and we're going to talk about baby sea lines in just a sec on the speaker for blue podcast welcome to the speaker for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host he just discovered periscope and might be slightly addicted andrew lewin hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast your voice for the ocean i'm your host angelon founder speak up for blue dot com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer that's right i'm an entrepreneur and everything i do is to protect the ocean including this podcast which if you haven't heard this podcast before and this is your first episode first of all welcome uh and second of all this is a podcast where i discuss ocean conservation news issues solutions to those issues and how we can implement action to really take hold of our earth take hold of our oceans and make sure that we live for a better ocean so thank you for for joining us and those of you who are returning i welcome you back and i appreciate all the comments that you have provided us over the past few months the comments are kind of pouring in and you know most of them are really good and i'm very very happy others are not so good however they have been very good in terms of of debating in certain aspects of course there's some aspects i will not debate and go back and forth but conversations are happening because of this podcast and and that's the whole point that's the whole point speak up for blue is to generate that conversation to get people to think about the ocean in their daily life and that's what we're doing today and uh just before i go on with today's episode uh we were supposed to have a guest on today uh jillian morris who is uh the executive director and founder of sharks for kids she will be on another day i promise you we've just had some problems we were supposed to record yesterday uh yesterday evening i had some i had field work to do with my my day job uh and second of all we tried to do it an earlier that morning and then the power went out on her end uh so we just haven't been able we just missed each other and then um i was supposed to do it this morning but i was just too tired because my field work went into the night uh and i ended up doing an all-nighter so uh we just haven't been able to connect uh we want to and we will bring you this episode probably in a couple weeks so stay tuned for that about shark education how important it is to really get into the schools and get into you know the the minds of young people and really shape their mind of what sharks are and get rid of that reputation how sharks are bad and sharks are just human killers because that's obviously not true but anyway let's get into today's episode today's episode is not a very good one in terms of a light-hearted episode um there's been a an article that i read recently uh on vise it's it's on motherboard dot vise dot com so i guess motherboard is just a way to distribute news and vise is a news agency um the the article is written by sarah emmerson who's a contributing editor device and the the article is called climate change is stranding stranding hundreds of dying baby sea lions in california so uh this is a big problem if you look at some of the pictures we're going to put the link in the show notes which will be speak up for blue dot com forward slash session 151 uh but essentially the marine mammal center the pacific the story goes and we've been following the story for a number of for the last couple years while i guess we've been following the story on the podcast but we've been documenting the last few years how it's been a really poor years for the sea lion population on the west coast of north america especially the united states and the reasons what's what's been happening is you've seen a lot of animals stranded a lot of sea lion stranded of all ages some have died many of them have died many of them have come up malnutrition and it's just a big problem for this population a large portion of it is attributed to climate change uh if you don't know what's going on by now if you haven't been listening to the podcast in the pacific ocean right now there is al nino which is a big uh meteorological force i guess or ocean force that is warming up the pacific oceans we have also the blob in the north pacific which is essentially this unexplained mass of warming that has hit the the north pacific really affecting the animals in there and then there's the pacific decadal oscillation which every 10 years switches from cool water to to warm water system and right now we're in a warm water phase which isn't helping the sea surface sea surface temperature of the pacific has a lot of effects over the entire pacific you have 93 bleaching of coral reefs in the grape barrier reef the largest grape barrier reef in the world and in one of the eight wonders of the world and now what you're having is you're having a lot of animals affected on the on throughout the pacific and including a well-documented one here in north america on the west coast of the states the pacific or east coast pacific i guess um but what's happening is these animals are coming to shore and they're very malnutrition if you look at the picture on the the um on the link that we've put in on the on the blog post and in your your podcast app you'll see these animals these baby sea lines that are coming up and they're just malnutrition and what's happening is the researchers are discovering that the the parents the mother just doesn't have the milk to to produce for these babies so they in the first year it's critical for these babies not only to develop fat especially because the cold waters of the pacific um but just for growth in itself and they just don't have that and they're not growing and what we're going to see is just this population that could be um annihilated or or drastically reducing the overall population numbers of this next generation coming up a lot of it is due to climate change and what's happening in specific with climate change the waters are warming the waters are changing the currents are changing alnino's pushing everything up everything north what i mean by up is north uh and you're seeing um a shift in food source so the food sources are gone or are moving uh and so you know the animals who don't go north have to adapt to the uh area in the in the in the pacific where they're normally found that's not happening on top of that you have climate change which is a big huge force in shaping what we know as the populations of any type of species in uh in the ocean and communities of course as well in habitats but you're also getting um other factors from overfishing and in in in in a particular case the sardine populations have crashed in the last since 2012 and since 2012 you've seen a really drastic decline in the population of sea lions to the to the point where you can't be to the point where the the sea lions don't have they just don't have food and that's why they're coming up malnutrition and that's due to overfishing and without some specific um some specific regulations or specific moratoriums on the sardine population this the line population is in major trouble and i'll tell you why with climate change a lot of the events that happen with climate change el nino you know you got bleaching and coral reefs and things like that they tend to be acute meaning they tend to happen very quickly but drastically so it changes the population of course it affects the population but if it only happens for a short period of time then that short period of time the people the populations might be able to recover after that time is done however if that time it gets extended then that acuteness just grows on top of that you have chronic disturbances such as overfishing such as water pollution and so forth plastic pollution with those chronic uh disturbance is hitting that population all the time you know lack of food lack of food lack of food big climate change hit warming waters boom population almost decimated or drastically reduced so you're having a lot of problems with you know with the chronic disturbances hitting this population all the time and then you have acute events like climate change and warming of waters and el nino effects that really changed the ability for the animals to adapt and that's what's happening in the grape or a reef which we've talked about recently but it's also happening now in with with sea lion populations and to be honest the sea lion populations are almost a wake-up call it's almost like an alarm because they keep coming to the shore they interact with humans or they are humans see them they tend to be one of those iconic species where you're just like oh my gosh why are all these baby sea lions here why is the pacific marine mammal center a great organization that helps rescue uh sea lions and put them back into the water why are they coming to the shore why are they being stranded why can't they feed themselves these are questions that were that scientists are asking and citizens are asking is becoming big news this has been big news throughout the entire year we've covered this in number of times and just more and more information is coming out every time we cover it about why these sea lions have actually you know reduce in population reduce in size just are coming to shore malnutrition and stranded and just I guess disoriented in terms of how or week to week to get back out into the ocean so it's luckily what luckily we have these marine mammal centers along the pacific that actually help you know bring these animals in provide them with the proper nutrition the proper care and then send them back out into the ocean the problem is what happens when we send them back out into the ocean their food source is almost decimated it's it's the the sardine population has crashed and there's really nothing nothing for them to eat or they haven't adapted to something else to eat so what's happening what's going to happen to all those those sea lion pops when they get put out into the ocean back into the ocean really nothing nothing's going to happen because they're not going to be able to eat they're not going to be able to find that food source that they're used to that they're trained to find by their the generation before them or that they're genetically marked to actually capture what they provide what they think is the best for them that food is almost gone and we have a problem now it's interesting we did an episode with kevin low a while ago who is a shark biologist at the shark lab in at the california university california and what was interesting what he was saying is that the sea lion population used was decimated back in uh i believe it was like the 1910s 11s kind of area or era and they came back in the 1960s once the the marine mammal protection act was implemented and that has allowed the shark population to grow that has allowed a lot of other populations to grow that has um you know so it's so the marine mammal protection act has actually helped sea lions grow to a certain you know level to a certain abundance that's allowed other populations to flourish in that area now um with this happening the populations are going to change the populations are not going to be the same and what are we going to do and the question that i ask is can the marine mammal protection act force the overfishing issue to be addressed can the marine male protection act in terms of we cannot harm sea lions for instance if you see a stranded sea lion you're technically not allowed within a hundred feet of it according to the marine male protection act you cannot disturb it you cannot harass it you cannot prevent it prevented from going it's but it's a natural way for any marine mammal that includes whales polar bears sea lions seals walruses dolphins porpoises anything so can you use can the government use the marine mammal protection act to say the sea lion population is not doing very well because of a number of factors but one of those factors is this food source is gone big dude overfishing and can we use that tool that regulated tool as a way to protect the sea lions in the united states i asked this because recently we covered on ocean talk friday the ability for the marine mammal protection act to prevent any uh aquarium from bringing in belugas that were coming in from uh russia because that population was being was being harmed by the fact that everybody kept grabbing belugas to be to be used in captivity for aquarium use so they use that tool to prevent the import of species from outside the us into the us can they use the tool to ensure that over that fishing is highly regulated and to ensure that there's enough food for the sea lions in california to eat and ensure that they don't get over fish that is a question i asked for you i don't know if that's possible i think it is i think it's a stretch and i don't think the fishing lobby will be happy about it because in the past fishermen and seals have always and sea lions have always been at odds because they're going after the same food source in the northeast uh canada where you see uh you know the cod stocks are coming back but they've been they've been drastically reduced there was a moratorium put in in 1992 where you couldn't fish for cod on the east coast anymore and then they started to slowly bring it back and we covered recently that you know um that the government and wwf or wildlife fun have been trying to put together a plan with the union for fishermen in in new philan to actually fish sustainably this cod that's starting to come back but traditionally what's happened and and it's used a lot in the seal hunt arguments for pro seal hunt arguments is the fact that you know of fishermen and seals compete for cod and the fishermen always say well the seals are just are growing so much that they're eating all of our fish so we can't fish them so that's why we're hunting the seals to maintain that population to bring the fish back and there's been studies trying to figure out you know if seals are actually affecting the the cod population in that way and then that into such a way that it's you know a problem for fishermen however what if you reverse engineer that and use it to make sure that the seals can eat the sea lions can eat in california you have a marine mammal protection act you have a a regulatory duty to protect marine mammals mammals and that includes sea lions and with climate change rearing it's actually head this year especially this year um and the the fact that there's a collapse in fish populations due to overfishing by humans could you use the marine mammal protection protection act to actually implement uh on the sea lions you know so that they protect the sea lions and make sure that they have enough food to eat so that's the question i post to you today uh that is you know the question i think you can i really do i i think we should i think we owe it not only to the regulatory tool but to the marine mammals out there we need to take care of them and the fact that we're the ones who overfished the sardines does not mean that these sea lions have to pay for it i mean i'm sure there are enough animals paying for our mistakes as it is you know all the ocean animals you can argue that are paying for our mistakes just due to the climate change effects that they're in go undergoing right now so we have a duty to protect them and i think we could use the marine male protection act to protect these sea lions of course that opens up a black box of how to protect you know ocean animals with by protecting other things um but i think it's an interesting argument uh so anyway so that's the uh that's the show for today i want to know what you guys think do you guys think that the government the u.s government should use the marine male protection act in the case for sea lions to protect sea lions and stop overfishing of sardines on the pacific coast of the u.s i think that's a great question to ask uh so put your put your comments uh on the speakup for blue dot com forward slash session 151 show notes page i want to hear what you guys have to think i think it's really important if you want to shoot me an email you can do so it's uh the easiest way is to go on the website and go to contact us and you can actually contact me through there or you can go to my email which is a luen a l e w i n at spatial conserve all one word dot com i should change that email to reflect speak up for blue but and make it easier but anyway that's the email for now you can contact me we can have a discussion there or you can put your comments on our facebook page you can hit us up on twitter at speakup for blue um all those all those uh all those links are in the show notes and please get in get in touch um and we also we are going to have i'm going to announce it on monday but we're going to have a group that you can actually interact as a speak as a speaker for the community so i i look forward to that and we'll put those links in the in the podcast for next week anyway thank you very much we're going to have ocean talk friday on friday i'm recording that tonight so that's definitely going to happen and in next week i am actually in cuba on a vacation with my family hopefully do some diving maybe do some some youtube videos down there uh so you'll hear from me again um but uh we've made sure that you're taking care for next week for for the episodes so stay tuned and tune in speak up for blue on monday wednesday and fridays and of course you can catch up on all your old all the old episodes on any other day of the week um and share them with your friends because everybody needs to know so i just want to thank you for listening to speak up for blue podcast because that's what you've been listening to i am your host Andrew luen happy wednesday and happy conservation [Music]
