An unfortunate incident happened along a shoreline within the past week, where a teenage girl was bitten by a sea lion. Video captured the incident as it showed the girl dancing in ankle-deep water as the sea lion bit her. The incident seemed to be unprovoked. 

The girl is okay; however, she is understandably frightened of sea lions. 

The animal was tested for diseases and was identified to have Domoic Acid poisoning, which can occur during algal blooms along a coastline. 

In this episode, I comment on the incident; how the media reported on it; and, the rarity of these types of attacks. 

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A video of a fisherman throwing a bear bomb into a pod of sea lions out in the ocean went viral on the web recently. The fisherman laughed about the incident confirming his distaste for the pinnipeds. He's not the only fisherman who finds the sea lions pests. Others have been complaining about sea lions eating their herring catch right out of their nets often damaging their fishing gear. 

There seems to be a notion that the sea lion and seal population is out of control; however, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, as well as other experts from the Vancouver Aquarium, disagree. The population hovers around 105,000 individuals and has been stable since 1999. The sea lion population is one-third of that of the seal population. The experts say the population is in line with the historical population before the Europeans came to North America and began hunting them to near decimation.

So there is no validity to the perception that the population is growing out of control. The question that needs to be answered is who has the priority for eating the fish, humans or pinnipeds (seals, sea lions)?

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