![]() ![]() ![]() Steelhead, like California sea lions, are native to Puget Sound. Smaller males often form their own groups, the marine equivalent of bar-hopping stag parties, migrating seasonally from rookeries in California and Mexico to rich feeding grounds like Puget Sound. Dominant males may grow to more than 1,100 pounds and preside over harems of females one-quarter to one-third their size. Sea lions are highly intelligent, a quality that helps them thrive in diverse marine habitats, in captivity, where they can learn to leap through hoops and balance beach balls on their noses, and in urban waterways in cities like Seattle. It didn’t take long for Hershel to figure this out. At its base, where the current slows, they must orient themselves, prepare for the shock of salt-free water, and wait their turn. But first they have to enter the ladder itself. Fish leap from pool to pool, as they would up the cascades in a stream, finding fresher water in each weir, until they reach the inland side of the locks. When they reach the locks, they funnel into a fish ladder: a staircase comprising twenty-one small pools, or weirs, each about a foot higher than the one below it. There probably aren’t many squid or clams in the Lake Washington Ship Canal, but salmon migrate through it each year to spawn. New Mapping Tool Helps Parks Plan for Climate ChangeĬalifornia sea lions eat squid, fish, and occasionally clams.LA’s ‘Unapologetically Black’ Mile-Long Monument Rises in Crenshaw.The Farm Helping Indigenous Seattleites Reconnect to Their Roots.Can City-Owned Vacant Lots Fill the Need for Park Equity in Houston?.By the mid-1990s, even their most enthusiastic supporters agreed that Ballard’s sea lions had outstayed their welcome. Instead, they sparked a decades-long battle that pitted state against state, agency against agency, conservationist against conservationist, and species against species. A liberal and famously outdoorsy city, Seattle is the kind of place where one would think a raft of playful sea lions could find safe harbor. Chittenden Locks on the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. In the early 1980s, a sea lion named Hershel - or rather, a group of adolescent male California sea lions that cheeky locals gave the collective name Hershel - started hanging around the Hiram M. ![]() In it, the author explores what it means to live in diverse, multispecies urban environments, and what it would take for members of human and non-human communities to coexist and thrive. Alagona, published by the University of California Press. EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an adapted excerpt from the book, “ The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities,” by Peter S. ![]()
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