||| FROM KUCB.COM |||
Encounters with humans from 2017 to 2021 killed hundreds of Steller sea lions and other marine mammals that swim in Alaska waters, along with dozens of Alaska whales, according to a new federal report.
Of 819 human-mammal interactions reported in the period, 710 were found to have caused death, serious injury or some other result that removed the animals from the population, said the report, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service. The other 109 interactions were found to have resulted in injuries that were not serious, the report said.
The totals represented a slight decrease from those in the previous report, which covered the five years from 2016 to 2020. During that five-year period, 867 NOAA-managed Alaska marine mammals were documented as killed or seriously injured from encounters with people.
The report, required under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, does not include any tallies from subsistence hunts. It is also limited to the marine mammals in Alaska that NOAA manages and does not include those that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages – walruses, sea otters and polar bears.
The most common cause of deaths and injuries was entanglement or entrapment in fishing gear, marine debris or other marine gear such as anchor lines. Hooking in fishing gear was the second-leading cause of marine mammal injury or death.
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