One of the biggest problems with fishing in the Bering Sea comes from interacting with the stellar sea lions. They are aggressive creatures who have no fear of mankind.
When longliners go after grey cod they often fish near the rookeries. Even though the vessels may be 30 miles from shore they are still plagued by the sea lions. Long lines are dropped into the water with hooked gangions tied every 2 or 3 feet. After 12 or 24 hours the lines are drawn up over a roller bolted to the rail and the person who works the roller helps the fish over the rail with a gaff. Many times the sea lions compete with the roller man for the grey or black cod. The giant seals come up and bite the bellies out of the fish, harvesting the rich livers which contained oils essential to their diets. Sometimes the roller man and the sea lion who was closest to the gear would reach for the same fish. If the sea lion was too quick and careless, it might grab the arm of the roller man instead of grabbing the fish. I know of several people who can testify to the fact that this is a very painful experience. The real trouble comes if instead of letting go the sea lion decides to drag the man into the water. Then a tug-of-war can ensue between the crew of the vessel and the sea lion with the unfortunate roller man being the object of contention. The sea lions do not usually harm a human being once they have pulled them into the water. The gesture is made more as an act of territorial establishment, as though to say, "These fish are mine because I am bigger than you, wait until I am done." It has become illegal in most ports to feed the sea lions who frequent those areas. One unfortunate fisherman in Kodiak was throwing herring to a sea lion and then stopped. The man was on a small trawler, and the sea lion came up the ramp at the stern which went down to the water line. The sea lion grabbed the man by the arm and dragged him into the water, taking him to the bottom of the channel, where it released him. The man was able to swim to shore without further harm, but he had been frightened by his experience. He also very nearly drowned because he didn't get a deep breath before being pulled beneath the water's surface. Other people have been bitten because they didn't drop the fish to the sea lions, but instead, insisted that the creatures take the fish from their hands. This is not a good idea when dealing with a 600 lb. animal that has incisors measured in inches. One unfortunate individual was operating a small vessel that measured 35 feet in length. He had a one-man longlining operation and would sleep after he had dropped his gear. One day he felt his boat give a huge lurch and was awakened by the sudden and violent movement. A bull sea lion had smelled the herring bait that the man kept in a cooler in the tiny pilot house, and the animal came aboard to look for the favored food. Somehow 600 lbs of hungry sea mammal managed to squeeze itself in through the narrow door of the pilot house. The fisherman had a rifle mounted over his bunk and used it to shoot the sea lion in the head. Unfortunately this left the animal wedged in the doorway, which was the only way out of the pilot house. The man had to butcher out the animal in order to move it. This left the tiny wheel house a bloody mess, and I won't go into the odiferous details of what it was like for the man to try and butcher the guts of the animal, which were too bulky to move as a unit. When I worked on the F/V Golden Pisces I was the cook. I was in the habit of going out on deck to smoke if I were indulging in a cigar. The skipper liked my pipe smoke, but couldn't stand my cigars. Often I would go out to watch the gear being brought on board and see what came up in the net. A sea lion got caught in the net as we were bringing it on board. Evidently hunger had made the animal aggressive and he had dived into the middle of our catch while it was close to the surface. When the deck hands saw what had happened, they hauled in the net as quickly as possible. A very small allowance is made for sea lion mortality in the trawling fisheries. If the animal died, our observer would have to report the death, and we could end up out of business for the rest of the season if it was the last sea lion in the quota. After the net was dumped the deck hands pulled the fish from around the sea lion, who was very exhausted and barely breathing. No one was sure what to do, but the skipper finally decided we should all keep quiet and let the animal rest. We would worry about handling the fish later. We watched in fearful silence, wondering if each shallow breath the animal huffed would be its last. Finally the animal rolled onto its belly and began to show signs of recovery. The first thing it did was start eating our catch. We waited until it began to move around, looking for the choicest fish, and then we began hollering at it and waving buoys to scare it down the ramp and off of the boat. The animal was still a little sluggish as it waddled back into the water, but at least we knew it would be okay. Another sea lion got greedy and decided to wait until the net had been emptied of its contents before coming on board. The beast had climbed up the stern ramp and was ensconced in the fish trough, devouring our catch while he ignored the harassment of our crew. I had come out on deck to see what all the noise was about, only to find the deck hands hiding behind the checker boards along the sides of the back deck. I called down from the upper deck, asking the guys why they didn't just wave buoys at the sea lion and scare it away? "Watch this!" Danny shouted, and he thrust a buoy at the sea lion while shouting at the animal. The sea lion opened his mouth wide and popped the buoy with his huge incisors as though it were made of bubble gum. Buoys are made of flexible, 1/4 inch thick plastic. They don't pop that easily, and are hard to stab with a knife. But that sea lion had no problem of any kind in chomping the buoy flat. Hmmm. So much for that idea. The guys had grabbed stones that had been dropped from the net whenever the sea lion wasn't looking. They lobbed the rocks at the sea lion, who would either ignore them as the stones fell short of the mark, or he would charge the checker boards, scaring the men away behind them, and then go back to gobbling fish. The processors had come up to watch the show, and finally we had all ten of our crew shouting and waving at the sea lion, who then realized that he was out numbered by a hostile species who might attack. The sea lion began to charge around the deck, still refusing to leave. The creature charged up the access ramp to the upper deck, and I just happened to be standing at the upper end. My peripheral vision registered the other people who had been up there with me running for their lives, but for some reason I did not move. Instead, when 600 lbs of panicked sea mammal was five feet away from running me flat into the deck boards, I threw my arms straight up into the air and roared as loud as I could. This was a reflex action and not a consciously planned action, but it saved me from becoming a "deck-oration." The sea lion came to a screeching halt on its flippers and stood in place only two feet away, bobbing its head at me. The sea lion didn't know what to do, and neither did I. Instead, I stood stock still, with my arms still straight up in the air, wondering why God hadn't given me the sense to run for my life like all the intelligent people on the boat? Finally the marine life version of a mack truck turned around and went back into the fish trough to eat. We swarmed close and began yelling and pelting the sea lion with anything we could find again, until the creature gave up and abandoned our vessel for the sea. For some reason several people felt it necessary to point out the fact that if it were not for dumb luck I would not have proven a successful candidate in the process of natural selection. As it is, the owner of the vessel would have had to let my family screw a memorial plate to the upper deck. If the sea lion had run me over, it is very doubtful that anyone could have successfully scraped my remains from the deck boards. A friend of mine worked as an observer on a trawler that was working a joint venture with a Japanese ship. They would bring in the net and then transfer it to the other ship to be unloaded. Sometimes they would sort through the net first, removing icebergs that could cause damage to the net as it was being hauled aboard. In this particular instance they decided to let the net go over to the other ship "as is." There were a few large icebergs trapped in the net which happened to have a group of sealions sitting on them. The other ship's crew didn't notice the sealions when they brought the net on board until they opened it and found themselves being chased around the deck. My friend and her crew watched this circus unfold from a distance, noting the sudden appearance of Japanese deck hands hanging from the rigging or scrambling about looking for some safe place to hide. You would think they would have radioed over to warn the other ship of its crew's impending peril, but nah. Why not let them have a little fun? My last story was told to me by an old Aleut who goes out fishing in his skiff. One day he saw four guys out hunting sea lions. They had just shot one animal and were hauling it into the boat when he came along. As soon as the beast was aboard my friend suddenly saw the four men running about the deck and jumping overboard. It seemed the sea lion had only been stunned by its wound and now it rampaged around the deck bellowing in a rage. Finally the sea lion jumped back in the water, which caused quite a stir, because now the four men were desperately trying to get back into the boat! So much for that little hunting expedition! However, no one was hurt, not even the sea lion it seems.
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