Research uses epidemiological
models to track spread of behavior among marine mammals
Date: December 16, 2016
Source: NOAA Fisheries West Coast
Region
A new study used the same kind of
models that scientists use to track disease to instead examine how some California sea lions
have learned to prey on salmon gathering to ascend fish ladders at Bonneville
Dam.
Although sea lions commonly feast
on fish, their predation on salmon at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia
River poses wildlife management challenges. The sea lions that
gather on the Columbia
each spring are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act while the salmon
they are eating are protected by the Endangered Species Act.
In 2008 NOAA Fisheries authorized
Oregon, Washington and Idaho wildlife authorities to begin trapping and
removing sea lions shown to repeatedly prey on salmon at the dam. The removal
program was designed to reduce impacts on protected salmon.
NOAA Fisheries recently
authorized the states to continue the removals over the next five years.
The new study examined the
effectiveness of the removal program, employing epidemiological models to
assess how the behavior of eating salmon at the dam passes among sea lions. The
research concluded that the removal program has successfully slowed the
transmission of the behavior among sea lions, but would have been more
effective if it had started sooner.
The findings highlight the need
to act early "from both a conservation and management perspective to
prevent the spread of a detrimental behavior and to minimize the total number
of animals removed," the scientists wrote in the paper published in the
journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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