It's a provocative one for sure. It's a polarizing issue, and it's a difficult one. I think the evidence demonstrates that there is significant predation. At heart, I'm an ecologist. Salmon, pinnipeds, predators and competitors have lived together since—to use a first nations term—time immemorial.
The idea that we would go out there with a simple solution and make everything better is probably unlikely to be successful. The kinds of things that we're supporting at PSF is understanding what kind of human-caused changes we have introduced to the ecosystem. Things like booming logs in estuaries that make perfect haulouts for seals and sea lions in places where salmon concentrate are probably contributing to increased predation. We were thinking that the way forward on that, at least for us, is to support undoing the ecological changes that give these pinnipeds an advantage to try to restore the natural balance.