The Associated Press
Research biologist Don Calkins watches one of his research subjects, a five-year-old Steller sea lion named Woody, as he swims around his pen at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Alaska. Scientists launched more than 150 studies this year to find out why the Steller sea lion population is declining.

Intense studies look at sea lions

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published December 28, 2001

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- In what may be among the most intense, well-funded investigations ever undertaken into a single species, scientists launched more than 150 studies this year to find out why the Steller sea lion population crashed and remains low.

During the past four decades, the population plunged more than 80 percent in Western Alaska from almost 180,000 animals in the late 1960s to fewer than 30,000. The official listing of this western stock as endangered has threatened Alaska's $1 billion ground-fishing industry.

That conflict, as much as the biological implications of a species sliding toward extinction, has spurred Congress to act.

Last month, Congress appropriated $40 million for Steller studies in 2002, boosting federal funding to more than $80 million in just two years.

Flood of money

The flood of money has generated laboratory experiments and field studies by hundreds of scientists spread among 25 government agencies, academic institutions and groups.

"I don't think there's anything really to compare it to," said Bob Small, director of the state's marine mammal program and head of the 20-member recovery team formed under the federal Endangered Species Act. "As for putting money toward a specific species and its specific interactions, it's pretty unprecedented."

Veteran fisheries biologist Lowell Fritz, assigned by the National Marine Fisheries Service to oversee funding and keep track of the projects, said the spending has ramped up from just under $5 million for Steller sea lion study last year.

The sheer amount of money has astonished some scientists.

During the early November meeting of the federal Marine Mammal Commission in Anchorage, chairman John Reynolds, a manatee specialist from Florida, used terms like "staggering" and "breathtaking" to describe the 2001 funding level of $43 million. That appropriation had been pushed by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

"It's probably equal to all the U.S. funding spent on all the other species combined," Reynolds said at the time.

Within a few weeks, Stevens had secured an additional $40 million for sea lion research through a spending bill for the Commerce, Justice and State departments.

Stevens has made clear his hope that better knowledge of sea lions will help keep the valuable commercial fishery alive.

Complicated results

But several biologists say the research so far hasn't proved much except that sea lion biology is extremely complex. The things that affect sea lion survival -- ocean conditions, food supply, predators -- have changed over the decades, so the causes and effects are complicated.

The scope of the new research is daunting. At least 115 principal investigators have recruited 300 to 400 helpers to test six general hypotheses -- competition with commercial fishing, environmental change in the ocean, predation by killer whales and sharks, diseases, contaminants and mortality caused by people.

The new studies will build on previous sea lion research and take years to sort out, Fritz said.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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