History/ Drink Recipe: The Angry Sea Lion

A terrible thing happened in May of 2008.

The Fish & Wildlife service announced that six sea lions at Bonneville Dam had found their way into two open traps and been shot to death by unknown attackers.

The news was widely reported. From the New York Times: “State and federal authorities set up traps to humanely catch and remove them from the dam, to be shipped to zoos and wildlife parks. But over the weekend someone shot and killed six of the sea lions as they lay in the traps.”

Things had been tense on the river for a while. Fishermen were noticing increasing numbers of sea lions at the dam, and the sea lions were aggressive, eating a lot of fish and even stealing salmon right off the fishing lines.

In March, Oregon and Washington had received federal authority to remove the sea lions, lethally or non-lethally. In April, the Humane Society of the United States had negotiated a temporary hold on sea lion killing while the society argued the case in court. Also in April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared a “fishery failure” for the Pacific Coast salmon fishery.

And now four California sea lions, including a pup, and two endangered Steller sea lions were dead.

Clearly, someone had decided to take the law into their own hands.

Or not.

A few days later a correction was released. The sea lions had not been shot to death. They had died of heat stroke after entering the open traps, which had somehow closed behind them while the staff was gone for the weekend.

How accomplished of a forensics expert do you have to be to determine whether or not an animal has been shot to death? Actually, the autopsies found that two or three of the sea lions had been shot, non-lethally, at some previous time. Ultimately, the whole thing was written off as an accident.

The Angry Sea Lion

• 1 ounce Black Seal rum
• ¼ ounce hot pepper vodka
• orange wedge and orange peel
• ginger ale

Pour rum and vodka over ice. Squeeze in the juice from a quarter of an orange and trim a bit of peel over the glass, then add. Top with ginger ale.

Serve on the rocks!

Or replace the ginger ale with Coke and the orange with lime and call it a Sea Lion Libre.