A dead sea lion filled the back of Brandon Ware’s pickup, hanging off the tailgate. Ware was wrestling with fat and fur, slowly skinning the animal.
“All I have to do is gently run my knife through it,” he said. “It separates the fat from the body and pulls the skin down a little bit more, just like peeling a banana.”
The massive animal had been terrorizing people and pets in Petersburg’s South Harbor. It was killed Dec. 7, but not by law enforcement. Instead, they collaborated with Ware, who is Tlingit and grew up hunting marine mammals. He plans to use the hide and whiskers for traditional regalia.
A 2,500-pound problem
Harbor Master Glorianne Wollen said the sea lion had been snapping at people and pets, stalking them as they walked the docks. She said people felt hunted.
Wollen said when there’s an aggressive sea lion hanging around, she’s always concerned about people with pets and little kids. She said a sea lion can climb up and easily move around on the docks.
“It’s a big, lumbering mass, and it makes a lot of noise,” she said. “And they bark like dogs and they get a lot of motivation. There’s a lot of aggression built up, and they can move pretty quick.”
She guessed this sea lion weighed upwards of 2,500 pounds, and she was getting a lot of complaints about it. She filed several reports with Petersburg’s National Marine Fisheries Service officer. Worried that something worse might happen, she contacted Petersburg’s State Troopers, too.
But federal law protects sea lions and other marine mammals. If law enforcement wants to kill a problem sea lion, they need permission from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Jim Kerr is Petersburg’s Police Chief. He said the department had tried deterrents like tasers, but the sea lion was unfazed. He says when the department kills a sea lion, NMFS takes head for necropsies, and the rest gets discarded. That doesn’t sit right with him.
“If you harvest an animal, you want to use it to its full potential,” he said. “And I look at the sea lion the same way. I don’t want to waste anything. I don’t feel right doing something like that.”
Ware had heard about the aggressive sea lion through the grapevine. He told Kerr he’d love a chance to subsistence harvest the animal. Kerr liked the idea.
“That means it doesn’t go to waste,” he said. “The police department was able to alleviate the public safety concern, and Brandon Ware, being Alaska Native, could legally harvest it for cultural reasons and continue the tradition of harvesting sea lions.”
Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, people who live on the coast and are either one-quarter Native or an enrolled member of a coastal tribe are allowed to harvest marine mammals.
So Kerr gave the brothers permission to use firearms in the harbors. Knowing the family’s history with hunting marine mammals, he said he trusted them to do it safely.
‘I need to do this right’
Ware said he took that responsibility seriously. He said he and his brother Billy waited for a moment when the sea lion was out in the open, with no chance of a dangerous ricochet.
“We had a couple of opportunities that we could have shot him, but because of the vicinity to the boats and vicinity to people, it wouldn’t have been a safe shot,” Ware said.
He said they were careful with shot placement. They didn’t want to wound the animal, and they didn’t want it to suffer.
“There was a sense of, like, ‘I need to do this right and take this seriously,’” he said. “It’s almost like there’s a pretty big weight on me, but it was good pressure. It’s that good pressure that causes me to perform rather than to freeze up.”
He shot the sea lion once in the head. Then his brother Billy did the same.
“The shots were effective – clean and effective, didn’t miss,” he said. “It ended up working out perfect.”
But it didn’t all go according to plan.
They shot the sea lion from a float in the South Harbor, and towed it over to Petersburg’s crane dock. They hoisted it up just a bit, to get a thicker line around it.
“As we were lifting it up on the big crane, the line snapped, and it sank like a rock down the bottom,” he said.
A whole crowd — Ware, his brother, a few family members, police officers, a state trooper — all stood around scratching their heads.
The water was about 20 feet deep. They needed a diver. But only Alaska Natives were allowed to participate in the harvest, and they didn’t know any Tlingit divers on the island.
Jerod Cook, Petersburg’s National Marine Fisheries Service officer, came to the rescue. Ware said Cook called it “Extenuating circumstances” and told him to hire a diver — any diver.
A couple of hours later, the sea lion was in the back of Ware’s truck. By then it was dark – they would have to wait until the next day to skin it out.
