Richard Merrick
108:04 - 109:05
“an up-to-date study of harvest seal diets in the Salish Sea that was published just this year indicates that salmon make up a very small portion of harvest seal diets.”
- Speaker
- Richard Merrick
- Timestamp
- 108:04 – 109:05
- Transcript
- House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries (Begich): Legislative Hearing
- Community
- Alaska News
- Captured at
- July 21, 2026
From the transcript
The diet data that we've seen is actually— that shows salmon to be a part of the Piniped diet in many ways is lacking. The Washington Academy of Sciences report was really powerful, but most of the data that was presented in there on diet is old or was really focused on very small collections spatially and temporally. More recent reports, and I've listed these in my longer presentation, show that these reports are likely to have significantly underestimated salmon consumption by pinnipeds. For example, an up-to-date study of harvest seal diets in the Salish Sea that was published just this year indicates that salmon make up a very small portion of harvest seal diets. So something like that, comparable wide-ranging and multi-season, multi-year study of sea lion diets is really necessary to understand the overall effect of pinniped predation on salmon.
Related Coverage
The sea lions in Congress's salmon bill breed in Southeast Alaska
A House bill would expand sea lion removals to protect Columbia River salmon. The Steller sea lions involved breed on rookeries in Southeast Alaska.
A cattle parasite Alaska will never see could still cost Alaskans
Screwworm can't survive an Alaska winter, but Alaskans buy beef from the herds it threatens — and we're last in line on price.
