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Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by sheer honesty, or you think me having my own opinions is "being negative", then this is not the place for you, and I suggest you leave and head elsewhere. I call a spade a spade, and I don't sugarcoat anything.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Sad This Is Still Going On

Today was the first fully sunny day we've had in quite a while, so I decided I was going to go back to the docks and do my walk from the bridge to the Safeway store. I've been unable to do it, partly because of the rain and because some meds I was on for a couple weeks made my skin extra sensitive to sunburn. So, I couldn't go out in the sun. So today, when I saw the sun was shining, I said I want to go back to the docks and do my 4-mile walk! Well, one thing I noticed when I went on that walk was how quiet it was. There were no sea lions. I guess they all went back out to sea. Maybe they will return in the fall. But they were not out there today. One thing I did see a lot of was fishing boats.

Well, I haven't been on that walk in quite a while, so I expected to feel a little tired. But I said to myself that even if I have to PUSH myself, I was going to go all the way to Safeway. Well, I did! I made it. When I was just about to the Safeway store, I saw a big fishing net lying on the ground. Just lying there. I looked at it and thought "Wow!! That would look so good hanging up on my wall!" I wondered who it belonged to. I didn't see anybody around except a man on a bulldozer working on a mound of dirt. He seemed to be removing some bushes. I didn't stick around to find out what he was trying to remove, because there was a peculiar odor in the area that reminded me of rotten meat. So, I headed over to the Safeway store because I had to take a wizz. hehehe!!

Well, once I was done there, I walked back out to the path. When I got to the path, I noticed first of all, that fishing net was still on the ground ahead of me, and there was another net like it rolled up and put on the back of a pick-up truck nearby. I still wondered if that net on the ground belonged to anyone. I figured it must have belonged to the person who had another one like it tied up on the back of his truck. Well, the next thing I noticed that bulldozer had changed from working on the dirt mound, to working in this one ditch that led down to the water. I wondered why it was working down there, it seemed to be struggling to pick something up in that ditch. I also noticed the peculiar odor was still in the air. I was curious, I wanted to see what the bulldozer was trying to pick up. I looked in the ditch, and I saw a couple of white masses. The white stuff was a powder, and the powder was there to cover up a couple of dead sea lions!

Well, finally I pieced together the mystery! The fishing net on the ground and in the pick up truck must have been what killed those poor animals! That also explains the peculiar odor in the air that smelled like rotten meat. It's sad that so many marine mammals and birds wind up that way. I don't know if that is the big reason why there are no sea lions at the docks anymore, it could be. The fishermen chased them away. Sadly, the dead sea lions I saw today may just be the beginning to a long season of laying out fishing nets, them getting entangled and drowning, and then washing up on the beach. So many of them wind up like that and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. The demand for fish is great, and you cannot stop sea lions from being sea lions. Underwater, the nets are nearly impossible for them to see, but if you make the nets brightly colored so they can see them, it may not attract the fish. It's a vicious cycle. Some animals are lucky and able to get away from the nets, or barely wriggle free enough that they can still get air when they need it. But most animals tangled in fishing nets wind up like this unfortunate sea lion


Either way, its a sad testament to how much more important it is to fulfill the needs of humans in our economy. We seem to be unable to get along in this world without destroying nature in some way. I cannot even imagine how terrified that poor animal must have felt getting caught in that net, and then not be able to get free, and breathe in water. I can't think of a more horrible way to die than that.

I began to feel terrible! I almost wanted to take that net home with me, keep it as a decoration. But after I found out what it did, I didn't want it anymore. I'd feel guilty having that net on my wall after it killed such a magnificent creature like those sea lions. It wouldn't be right. So, I walked off without it.

2 comments:

mikessa said...

You wanna know why? I have read articles from the Oregonian on FB where they wanna get rid of the sea lions because they get in the way of the fishing industry. I have read comments that were posted by others and they seemed to be for it. Unfortunately it sounded like Oregon's gotta lot of animal haters, and they just don't care how sea lions get killed. Now they wanna use a fake orca to scare them away.

I told them that those people are disgusting!!! How do they live with themselves knowing that they wanna kill such a precious animal? There is a much more humane way to deal with this problem and killing them is not the answer.

I love sea lions and who could not resist those sweet faces!!!

Dee TimmyHutchFan said...

I know. They were so funny! And they're such beautiful animals. I don't know why people want to see them destroyed. This makes me feel sad. But seeing those animals that had been killed by fishing nets hurt me even more. I wish there was a way to stop it.