Seeing Sea Lions: Southern sea lions (Otaria flavescens) breeding at the Falkland Islands, where the population declined from 370,000+ animals in the 1930s to just 30,000 in 1965COURTESY OF ALASTAIR BAYLIS
“There is good reason to suppose that the sea lions of the Falklands can be exploited profitably, and that if due precautions are taken a sealing industry can be established on a permanent basis,” scientist James Hamilton wrote in 1934. He had traveled to the remote South Atlantic archipelago with a British scientific team in 1929 and spent three years observing the southern sea lion, Otaria flavescens, estimating population size. From 1933 to 1937, Hamilton and a small team of assistants recorded sea lion populations at 56 rocky, exposed rookeries by rushing at colonies from the water, causing frightened adults to stampede off while leaving the slower-moving pups behind to be counted. “The bite of the pup, although annoying, is not serious,” he noted. The ...
