Brazil’s Angry Fishermen Defy Law, Slay Sea Lions in War for Meager Catch

TORRES, Brazil —  They enchant circus audiences by balancing balls on their snouts and draw coos of delight from children at zoos with their gawky waddle and lovable, goggle-eyed stares.

But when sea lions follow a dinghy 50 miles, gnash holes in a gill net and devour a 300-pound catch of sardines or bluefish, what do many Brazilian fishermen do?

“Blast away,” says Jose Carlos de Moroteskowski, holding up the freshly oiled barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun, “and hope the bodies don’t wash up on shore.”

For decades, humans and sea lions have fought for fish off the southern Atlantic coast of South America. The battles usually ended the same way: Man got fish, and sea lions got killed--to the point of endangerment.

Brazil’s justice department has outlawed the slaying of sea lions. The environmental agency has established a sanctuary on an islet near this southern coastal city. Federal agents have raided fishing boats for guns.

But the killing goes on.

A male sea lion washed up recently on a stretch of sand a few miles south of Torres. The 800-pound carcass had been mangled and chewed almost beyond recognition, but its head had four unmistakable holes.

“This doesn’t have to happen,” says Augusto Carneiro, a conservationist who has studied South American sea lions since 1948. “Our fishermen could live with the sea lions. But man is just too greedy.”

Torres is a battleground in a global war between marine mammals and fishermen for the food both need to survive, a struggle that intensifies each time a trawler raises a net, each time a sea lion is born.

The competition is particularly sharp along Brazil’s southern seaboard, but it also flares up off the shores of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, even along the coasts of California and Alaska.

The sea lions’ huge appetite for fish that command luxury prices pits them against fleets of trawlers and traditional fishermen who are fishing harder because of declining global stocks.

In poorer countries such as Brazil, where monitoring of trawlers is spotty and unemployment forces more people to fish to survive, conflict is unavoidable.

“It’s easier to blame sea lions for shrinking fish catches than to stop the real culprits--industrial fishing fleets,” says Jose Truda Palazzo, a biologist in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul state 75 miles south of Torres.

“This mess is about who has more rights to the sea. Is it the small fisherman, the big trawler, the biologist, the government, or the sea lions? And who on earth is going to decide?”

*

Earsplitting barks greet a dinghy approaching Sea Lion Island. Three huge sea lions sit up on the basalt rocks, their tawny fur dappled by the afternoon sun.

They waddle forward and plunge into the warm, frothing surf. As soon as they hit water they are transformed from clumsy land mammals into sleek amphibians with the grace of eagles.

They race toward the boat, surprisingly quick for 600-pound creatures, circle it, and pop out of the water--big black eyes, whiskery faces and supple figures bobbing in the turquoise water and silvery spray.

This trio is far from home: They swam more than 1,000 miles to reach this island of rocks the size of a football field. Here they’ll rest and feed until October, the end of the winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Their arrival is part of an annual migration that begins at the horn of South America after January, the mating season for sea lions. Some swim up the Pacific coast to Peru, others make the journey around Tierra del Fuego and on upward to Seal Island off the coast of Uruguay.

Females stop in Uruguayan waters to feed or nurse their pups with fatty, highly nutritious milk. The males swim another 500 miles north, arriving in the warmer waters off Rio Grande do Sul by June.

“It’s a touching act of chivalry,” says Carneiro, the conservationist. “The males depart to leave their mates and children plenty of food to hunt in the ocean.”

One of 34 species of seals, the South American sea lion has been wandering the oceans for 12 million years.

The “Otaria Flavescens” is believed to have first appeared in the northern Pacific, evolving from the same land ancestors that gave rise to dogs and bears,

These pinnipeds--or “fin-feet”--developed tiny, visible ears and learned to use their paddle-like rear limbs to walk on land. They also have two front flippers for swimming.

Their large, saucer-shaped eyes help them see farther through dimly lit water than humans can on a sunny day, allowing them to hunt at great depths. Below the surface they slow their heart rate to 10% of the rate above water, conserving oxygen by slowing blood circulation.

Adult males average 8 1/2 feet in length and weigh about 775 pounds. Females are normally 6 feet long, weighing about 450 pounds.

Their size and blubbery bulk allow sea lions to remain on shore and beat the cold in the oceans. And they can go without food and water for up to 70 days.

But when they eat, they eat. An adult male can put away 35 pounds of fish at a time. Sea lions have a preference for salmon, bluefish, squid, sardines, eels, lobster and catfish.

So do fishermen.

“Today I found an area full of bluefish, but I couldn’t cast one net because I had eight lions on my tail,” says Amauri Ezequiel de Souza, who has fished off the coast of Torres for 25 of his 41 years.

“I’m a law-abiding man, sir, but, sometimes, when you see those things attacking your net, ripping through your catch, my God, you feel justified in taking out the old shotgun and blasting away.”

*

The sea is white with wind. Hills of water curl and break into briny clouds. A visitor’s boat rolls like a cork on the giant swells.

It’s no wonder the old fishermen call the sea off Torres “the Cemetery of Ships.” But these same waters that capsized ships also protected Brazil’s sea lions in the 18th and 19th centuries, the darkest in seal history.

Walruses, harp and hooded seals sustained major slaughters around the planet for their oil, fur pelts, ivory and gamy-flavored meat.

In Brazil, however, the sea lions went largely unscathed. Fishermen wrote in their logs in the 1930s that the Atlantic was so full of sea lions that they blanketed Brazil’s shores.

That changed after World War II, when countries rushed to stake out their new 200-nautical-mile offshore limits with sturdier, faster industrial fishing vessels.

Foreign trawlers also moved in, scooping up more and more fish. As stocks declined, local fishermen turned to hunting shark, killing off great whites that had preyed on sea lions and curbed their population growth.

At the same time, sea lions relied more and more on the bulging nets of small fishing vessels for sustenance.

But what really put the sea lions in danger was their friendly nature. With no fear of man, they swam up to the bows of boats that brought armed fishermen to Sea Lion Island.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, tens of thousands of sea lions were slain with revolvers, harpoons, shotguns--even dynamite. State troopers assisted in the slaughter, lending weapons and ammunition to tourists and hunters.

By 1980, the documented population of sea lions in Brazil had fallen below 200. The numbers of pinnipeds also plunged along the coasts of Uruguay and Argentina as one massacre followed another.

Brazil’s federal government intervened in 1983, outlawing the killing of sea lions and establishing a one-mile buffer around Sea Lion Island. It worked at first. Biologists noted an increase in the number of sea lions off Brazil.

Then something happened.

One morning in October 1987, a sea lion washed up on a beach south of Torres. Then another, and then dozens more. In three days, more than 160 sea lion carcasses washed up on shore, some of them pups.

Each one with the telltale holes.

“The fishermen had no mercy,” recalls Nelson Justo, a part-time fisherman who denounced the slaughter to the federal police. “They went out in their boats to Sea Lion Island and didn’t stop shooting until the water ran red.”

The denunciation almost cost Justo his life. A mob chased him through Torres, stoned his car and house, and tried to lynch him. He fled the city with his wife, returning only weeks later.

He no longer fishes and leads a quiet life in Torres.

“Man upset the marine balance with his greed,” Justo says. “The nets are bad things. They should be banned. By catching so many bluefish with one swipe, they call the attention of the sea lions. Then the trouble starts.”

The massacre, however, galvanized Brazilian conservationists and turned public opinion in favor of the sea lions.

Letters poured in to legislators from residents around Rio Grande do Sul. Newspapers, magazines and environmental groups decried the killings. The federal police raided the area, seizing weapons and boats.

Brazil’s attorney general sued the environmental protection agency, IBAMA, for inaction. Buoys were set up to mark off the sea lion reservation, and IBAMA was ordered to patrol it.

In February, a judge ordered a Torres fisherman to pay a $3,000 fine for killing a sea lion during the 1988 massacre--the first time a court had punished anyone in Brazil for slaying pinnipeds.

Today, the sea lions are coming back. About 300 males have been sighted this year near Torres. Biologists estimate the total population along the south Atlantic seaboard at 3,000, up a third from the late 1980s.

But the sea lions are not out of danger.

Environmental enforcement remains spotty. Only one boat and five agents are available to patrol Rio Grande do Sul’s 385-mile coastline and protecting pinnipeds is a small part of their duties, says Nelton Reis, IBAMA’s director in Porto Alegre.

Chemical pollutants, pesticide residues and marine debris are less visible threats. And sea lions may be accumulating concentrations of toxic compounds such as PCBs in their blubbery tissue, which some scientists fear may lead to breeding disorders.

And there are the fishermen--frustrated, confused and angry.

“We’re losing everything, our catch and our nets,” says Israel Lessa Silveira, 30. Behind him on the wharf, his two sons slice off the fins of baby sharks. At market, they would get just 50 cents a pound for the shark, their only catch that day.

“You can’t arrest a sea lion. But you can make sure he never steals from you again.”