The Clayoquot Action Conservation Team was notified of the burglary by a whale monitoring team on Sunday, and has since observed California lion storks and sea lions. “Some of them were coming and going from the pens, so we’re very worried about the entanglement,” said Bonny Glambeck, the group’s campaign manager. “It is very common for these sea lions to be injured in this situation.” Oceans and Fisheries Canada said Cermaq Rant Point Farm has been reporting ongoing challenges to sea lions since March 23. The DFO said the facility has predator nets and an electric fence around open-net fish pens, but somehow the sea lions violated its defenses. It is not clear how the sea lions managed to get on the farm, if there were holes in the nets or if the animals jumped from above. Cermaq did not respond to a comment from CTV News. Now the concern is if the sea lions do not go away on their own, history could repeat itself. In 2016, when another Cermaq fish farm near Tofino had 15 sea lions in its pen, the DFO authorized the company to shoot and kill the animals. “The sea lions were shot in two days,” Glambeck said. “We are really worried that this could be the fate of these sea lions.” He noticed that Cermaq was using an acoustic deterrent to scare the animals, but said it did not seem to work. “They sound like a big shot and they used them repeatedly, about every three minutes,” he said. “We are really worried about using them to scare the sea lions out of their pens because they can damage their hearing, they can damage their eyes.” In an e-mail, the DFO said: “Efforts to deter sea lions and remove them from the nets, with the least damage to the animals, are continuing in consultation with DFO biologists. “Currently, sea lions have not been discouraged by passive deterrent efforts to eradicate them.” Andrew Trites, director and professor at UBC’s Marine Mammal Research Unit, said there was a narrow window to get the sea lions out of the herds and now it would be a difficult task. “I think the longer they stay, the more common they become and all the noise and other things just become part of the ambient noise, that it will not be effective. So another approach tries to sideline them to see if you can push them the way they came in, ”Trites explained. With plenty of fish, he said sea lions are highly motivated to stay. “This is a time of year when males in particular are growing. “They are looking for food, more to eat, and these fish farms look like we have reached the delicatessen,” he said. But there are not as many fish as there would normally be because Cermaq is currently harvesting, according to the DFO. The department said there was a “strict requirement” that none of the sea lions be killed. He said there were no indications that large numbers of Atlantic salmon had escaped the facility.
