Most wild critters look for the easiest meal. It's what consumes most of their time and energy.
It's normal for a deer to run away from me this time of year when I'm out back in the woodlot. It's also normal for that same deer to seek me out, and stand within mere feet of me if the snow is deep and I'm knocking down trees. The tops are an easy meal, and the twitch trails make traveling a lot less expensive, calorie wise
As long as the seals view that lure of an easy meal as worth the risk, they'll opt for the sushi bar. If the food is too plentiful, they will become wasteful. A bit here, another there.
The salmon are at risk due to a wide range of man created hazards. Dams are near the top of the ladder for a variety of reasons. You can pour the lead to the seals, and that will take care of the current crop, but they will continuously be replaced until the seal population in that area becomes numbered to few to make a dent in the anadromous fish runs.
Cormorants were doing a number on Atlantic Salmon every time the hatcheries tried to charge a river here in Maine with a new batch of smolts. The cormorants (aka shags) were doing what comes natural. In an effort to stop the smorgasbord, game officials tried the 12ga approach. It had limited success.
It took a while, but finally it was realized what was missing, was the rest of the ecosystem. If the rivers are full of alewife and shad at the same time the salmon are heading seaward, the toll from the shags becomes insignificant.
You may be toast without the Hydro power, the fish are screwed with it. And the seals just want to earn a living with as little effort as possible.
Until a way is arrived upon that allows the salmon to keep a strong pace upstream, the seals will always be looked at as the problem. Don't lose sight of the fact that the turbines are taking a huge toll on the outward migrations, further threatening the survivability of future runs.
http://www.nrcm.org/issue_edwardsdam.aspLearn from our (Maine's) mistakes, and also our current approach...use above link
Tight lines!