Pelican tied to a seagull; please consider wildlife on water

We are frequently careless and take our natural resources for granted. Here are a few things we might want to consider.

Pelicans are interesting to observe but not always the smartest birds around. We depend on birds, especially pelicans, to help us locate minnows and fish eating those minnows. If they are diving, there is fish or fish food there. Then we train them to follow us for free food. They get accustomed to grabbing fish at cleaning tables and fishing boats. Just watch how they gather at fish-cleaning tables. Some will hang around the boats catching fish. If you feed them, they will depend on you to feed them forever. They have a hard enough time with our water quality issues, don’t make things harder.

While dipping crabs recently we encountered a pelican tied to a seagull. They were tangled up in a boatlift and challenging to capture. The gull had passed so they had been tangled for a while. We got them into a landing net and freed the pelican. It was weak but flew off. If you hook a bird, please carefully try to reel them in and untangle it. Always cover the head and be careful. They have sharp beaks. Clear all lines and hooks. Dangling lines get tangled in trees as they roost, holding them there to starve to death. If you have anything to feed them, try to get them to eat. If a bird is looking at your bait, please take it away from them as soon as possible. Do not sit there and watch it eat your bait. Be especially careful if you hook a great blue heron, as that would be a serious spear.

Dolphins are another example. They are everyone’s friends until they start stealing your catch. It’s terrible when they eat everything we release. Due to restrictions on undersized and oversized fish, and closed-season fish, we are required to release most of our catch these days. Hungry dolphins have learned to let us fish for them. These are extremely intelligent animals, having trained each other and their young to enjoy free lunches at our expense. It is a federal offence to feed or harass marine mammals, such as dolphins and manatees. They can come to us, but we cannot go to them.

We enjoy watching them surf in our wakes. They enjoy surfing. I understand that it’s hard to leave a good bite because Flipper has moved in. If you don’t move others will just come in and eat everything you release. Please remember that eaten fish don’t grow or reproduce.

Balloons kill turtles. While fishing offshore recently we observed several brightly colored helium balloons. They look vibrant and attract attention, but they are eaten by sea turtles. This clogs up their digestive track and they starve to death. I’m sure none of us want to torture turtles. We need to be extremely careful to not allow balloons to float off and endanger our wildlife. I’ve noticed several realtors using groups of colorful balloons to attract attention to their open-house signs. Perhaps colorful flags would grab attention without endangering our wildlife.

 Thank you for considering our environment and animals.