Hey Buddy, You Want a Sea Lion?

There's been another reprieve for those salmon-snarfing sea lions on the Columbia River. A reprieve from death anyway. The whiskery sea mammals are still up for a one-way trip to Sea World.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction and blocked the National Marine Fisheries Service from killing any California sea lions, stating that to kill them before the case has made its way through the court system is "by definition, irreparable."

However the judges did give the Fisheries Service the go-ahead on trapping the animals and offering them to zoos, aquariums and marine parks that may want a salmon loving sea lion of their very own. Sea lions, as it turns out, can be trained to "Riverdance," for their supper instead of lounging by the Bonneville Dam waiting for salmon to swim by.

Sea lion trapping is set to begin today, and sea lions are apparently already hanging out on platforms that can be rigged to trap the animals.

The sea lions have learned that the salmon cluster in the river to climb the Bonneville Dam's fish ladder. Since the dam blocks the river, the fish use the "ladder" to bypass the dam to get to their spawning grounds.

Federal estimates put the number of endangered spring chinook salmon scarfed by the sea lions as 212 to 2,094. This year's total salmon run is expected to be 269,000 fish.

Fish ladders do not allow all spawning salmon to bypass the dam. Dams also destroy salmon habitat and heat the water to temperatures the salmon cannot tolerate.

9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled a hearing for the case for May 8 in Pasadena, Calif.

There are no plans to eradicate the dam, or find it a new home somewhere else.