Australia, home to the rarest of all pinniped species 🦭..
Unfortunately these beautiful creatures are endangered.
How can that be?
Well we have to first understand that there’s an estimated amount 12,000 Australian sea lions roaming our waters, with 85% of them living down in South Australia. 🇦🇺
Within a colony, fewer than 25 sea pups are born each year. 📊
A female sea lion can be pregnant for up to 17 months, the longest of any seal species. 📈
An average lifespan for these guys is anywhere between 17-25 years. 🦭
To add to this, off shore oil rigging has caused migration shift for our apex predators to move towards the South Australian waters making it near impossible for new born sea pups and older sea lions to survive due to the harsh conditions. ⚓️
Commercial fishing for the good use of leather and oil, hasn’t seem to slow down, its only gotten worse, we have grown to be so greedy that it’s forcing this species into extinction as we know it. 🛥️
And lastly, entanglement due to marine debris.
The MAJOR threat identified for the Australian sea lion is interactions with fisheries, particularly shark and crayfish fisheries. The monofilament gill net used in shark fisheries is the entangling material observed in 55% of Australian Sea-lion entanglements. 🛟
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