Story from John Vonderlin
Email John ([email protected])
Hi June,
I’ve gathered more then twenty stories about the public clamor to slaughter the sea lions and seals as the fisheries declined at the end of the 19th Century. You see it wasn’t the dynamiting, gill netting, spearing, or the out of season, under-sized and over limit fishing, or the fouling of waterways with uncontrolled pollution, and the choking of spawning beds with sediment from rapacious logging that was causing the problem. It was those damn, “coyotes of the sea,” that were causing the declines. Check out some the headlines of the stories of this sad chapter in our stewardship of our coast. The related stories of why and how the slaughter was callously carried out, make for fascinating, if disturbing reading. Greed encourages people to do heartless things, as we all know, but the complicity of officials and experts in this effort amazed me. I guess as they say, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Enjoy. John
