I'm in Anchorage,Alaska,USA for a few days and I thought that this article from
the local newspaper would amuse some of you on the list.
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Divers lasso sea lions

By Doug O'harra
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: September 24, 2001) As populations of the endangered Steller sea
lions crashed throughout the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Chain, biologists
began worrying about low survival among juveniles. But the young animals --
skittish adolescents that sport up to 300 pounds of muscle and mouths of impressive
teeth -- were almost impossible to capture on shore for health studies or satellite
tagging.

"We were thrashing about in the mid-1990s, trying to figure out a way to catch
juveniles because they're so darned difficult," said sea lion expert Don Calkins,
now based at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. "They tend to stay closer
to the water, and they spook so easily."
Underwater photographer Shane Moore approached Calkins -- then a leading sea
lion researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game -- with what seemed
at first like a crazy idea.

"Shane's an old Wyoming cowboy," Calkins said. "He said to me: These sea lions
just about mob me when I go underwater. I think you could put a lasso around
them."'

Like an increasing number of other marine biologists, Calkins and his team had
found that they needed to personally chase down their study subjects beneath
the waves.

Calkins and scuba divers with the department's sea lion project soon confirmed
that the young marine mammals were just too curious for their own good. By dangling
a herring on a pole, the divers could coax the animals to stick their heads
through a noose that allowed them to be hauled to the surface without being
harmed.

Between 1997 and last spring, 171 young sea lions had been captured for state
and federal studies, Calkins said. More effort was under way last week.

In pursuit of data about jellyfish, salmon, kelp forests, chitons, sea urchins,
river otters, herring and the uncharted slopes of undersea mountains, more and
more Alaska biologists have been diving with scuba or tethered lines, journeying
underwater in tiny submarines and launching remote vehicles that can explore
formerly inaccessible depths.

"Basically these are people who do their science underwater. They go underwater
themselves," said Bob Hicks, the dive coordinator at the Alaska SeaLife Center.
"It's not recreational diving. It has a goal, it has an objective. And that
makes it more inherently risky."

Last week, more than 100 divers and marine biologists gathered in Seward to
discuss findings and ideas at the 21st annual Scientific Diving Symposium of
the American Academy of Underwater Sciences. Sponsors of the first underwater
diving conference in Alaska include the Alaska Sea Grant College Program and
the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.


The sessions began with technical forums dealing with hypothermia and other
problems that accompany working in frigid water, said science diver Stephen
Jewitt, of UAF's Institute of Marine Science and one of the organizers of the
conference.

"It's not just diving. It's sharing cold-water expertise, learning things to
help you," Jewitt said.

Forty-five to 50 divers planned to explore a submerged barge near Fox Island
that is "loaded with invertebrates" and a rock pile near Hat Island called Boulder
City, Hicks said. Outfitting so many people meant Hicks had to gather more than
1,350 pounds of weights for diving belts.

Later, 21 underwater studies were presented, about half concentrating on projects
in Alaska. They ran the gamut of species and topics and locales, from Antarctica
to Florida to the Arctic.

But the sea lion studies, presented as a narrated video Friday afternoon, may
illustrate the most dramatic and potentially dangerous version of science diving.


"You've got to watch out for the head, especially for those teeth," Calkins
said.

About four years ago, Calkins began working out the method with divers Dennis
McAllister and Walt Cunningham. As predicted, they found dozens of youngsters
cavorting in the waters near haulouts, apparently waiting for their mothers
to return with food.

"You end up with 20, 30, 50, 100 animals just hanging out," Calkins said. "So
they play around. They've got time on their hands, so they're real curious."


Fortunately, the massive adult males, which can weigh up to a ton, and the adult
females, smaller but still very powerful, were all extremely wary, rarely approaching
the divers, Calkins said. "They're just not interested."

But the young animals would swim right up, as bold as rambunctious puppies --
nipping fins, mouthing gloves.

"They don't seem to be aggressive," Calkins said, "just real curious."

The capture strategy works like this: Two divers sit on the bottom in about
35 feet of water. One holds up a rod baited with herring. The other waits with
a rod holding a noose connected to a buoy on the surface by about 45 feet of
rope.

Like someone enticing a stray dog to take a bone, the diver with the herring
coaxes the sea lion to stick its head through the noose. The other diver tightens
the noose and releases the line. Stops keep the noose from strangling the animal
or from loosening and falling off.

As the startled sea lion bolts, the divers scramble away. A team in a skiff
snatches the buoy, retrieves the line, hauls the sea lion to the surface and
puts it into a capture box. Once aboard a research vessel, the animal is anesthetized,
allowing biologists to weigh, measure, take samples from and outfit it with
a tracking tag. In the end, most animals are released, according to a report
by McAllister, Calkins and diver Ken Pitcher.

Since 1997, about eight divers have trained to do the work, now conducted by
both state and federal agencies, Hicks said. The 171 animals caught through
May ranged from 2 months to 3 years. None died during the capture, though one
animal died from an anesthesia-related accident during its exam, the report
said.

"It has worked real well," Calkins said. "There certainly doesn't seem to be
a better way of capturing young-of-the-year and juvenile sea lions."

 ____
(_/\_)Shep Griswold
==@ Kirkland,Wa,USA
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