Seal hunt begins; IFAW bears witness

Harp seals and Cod
Questions and Answers

IMMA Technical Briefing 99-02
D.M. Lavigne, S. Fink, D. Johnston, and P. Meisenheimer
International Marine Mammal Association
1474 Gordon St.
Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1L 1C8

This technical briefing addresses commonly asked questions about
Northwest Atlantic harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) and their
relationship with Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua).

1. Did harp seals cause the collapse of cod stocks?

No. At the time of the cod stock collapse off eastern Canada in 1992
it was popular to blame seals, European fishers and a variety of other
factors. Although the occasional claim that seals were involved in the
collapse is still heard, that view is not supported by any available
scientific evidence. As early as 1994, two scientists then in the
employ of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)
concluded "that the collapse of northern cod can be attributed solely
to overexploitation [by humans]¼."1 Most of the interest groups
(including fishers, sealers, federal and provincial politicians,
government scientists and independent scientists) now generally agree
that seals did not cause the depletion and collapse of any East coast
fish stocks.

2. Are harp seals impeding the recovery of depleted cod stocks?

There is no scientific evidence to support the common contention that
harp seals are impeding the recovery of cod stocks. In 1995, 97
scientists from 15 countries signed a petition, which read (in part):
"All scientific efforts to find an effect of seal predation on
Canadian groundfish stocks have failed to show any impact."2 While
subsequent government 'fact sheets' posted on the World Wide Web have
repeated the claim the seals are hindering the recovery of cod
stocks,3,4 Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) seal
specialist, Dr. Garry Stenson, has acknowledged (consistent with all
available scientific advice) that "There is no scientific basis for
this statement and we are getting a lot of flack because of it."4 A
1997 international scientific workshop on interactions between harp
seals and fisheries - which included a number of DFO scientists -
"accepted ¼ that it could not [on the basis of available information]
assess the relative importance of predation by harp seals on the
current status of the northern cod stock."5 Still, some government
spokespersons persist in claiming that, despite the fact that harp
seals rarely eat Atlantic cod, they are an important source of cod
mortality. But even they have conceded that "The impact of seals on
the 2J3KL cod stock [i.e. the northern cod stock]6 remains unclear."7

3. So, why are cod stocks not showing signs of recovery?

Since the closure of the cod fishery in 1992, a number of cod stocks
actually have begun to show promising signs of recovery. In southern
Newfoundland, for example, a limited fishery was permitted in 1998. In
the case of northern cod, however, no real signs of recovery yet have
been observed. This is not surprising, given the slower growth rate
and delayed reproduction of northern cod relative to more southern
stocks.6 Even at the time of the moratorium, a number of biologists
predicted the stock would take a decade or more to recover from its
extremely depleted state.8

4. What has been the impact of the cod moratorium on the Newfoundland
fishery?

Much of the debate about seals and fisheries is predicated on the
dramatic effect that the 1992 collapse of the cod fishery, and other
traditional fisheries, has had on Newfoundland. In this context, it
should be noted that cod fishers and others displaced by the collapse
have been beneficiaries of the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery
Program (NCARP) from 1992-1994 and a subsequent $1.9 billion federally
funded compensation program known as The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy
(TAGS), which began in 1994 and expired in August 1998.9 In June 1998,
it was announced that government had approved a new federal assistance
program, which would provide an additional $550 million for East coast
fishers after the TAGS program ended.10 Newfoundland Premier, the Hon.
Brian Tobin, was publicly critical of that program and, following
discussions with the Prime Minister, the Hon. Jean Chrétien, it was
announced on 19 June 1998 that the East coast fishery assistance
program had been increased to some $730 million.10

While the federal subsidy programs have always been well publicized,
it seems to have gone largely unnoticed that the landed value of the
entire Newfoundland fishery actually began to recover in 1993 and, by
1995, it exceeded pre-moratorium levels as some fishers, at least,
switched their attention to other fishery resources, particularly
shellfish.11

A great deal of misunderstanding remains about the importance of
fishing to the economies of Canada and Newfoundland. Although fishing
was Canada's first business12, it now contributes less than 1 per cent
to the Canadian GDP.13 In Newfoundland, fishing contributed an average
of only 1.4 per cent annually to the provincial GDP between 1993 and
1997, inclusive.14

5. Is the amount of fish consumed by seals a measure of impact on
fisheries?

Proponents of culling harp seals, ostensibly to benefit fisheries,
invariably refer to estimates of the amount of fish purportedly
consumed by seals annually to support their calls for an increased
seal kill. Recently, they misleadingly cited a paper attributed to the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization's (NAFO) Scientific Council
as their authority, without mentioning that the paper in question was
an unpublished manuscript co-authored by two Canadian government
scientists.15

Regardless, while claims that seals are eating tens of thousands of
tonnes of commercially important fish may seem to support the
conclusion that they are having large impacts on fisheries, that
conclusion may well be wrong. The figures themselves are derived by
multiplying the estimated food consumption of an average seal by the
estimated size of the population. If the estimate of population size
is wrong - as may well be the case for Northwest Atlantic harp seals -
then so too will be the estimate of its food consumption. The
available calculations also make questionable assumptions about the
availability of individual prey, including Atlantic cod. And, most
importantly, there is the problem that estimates of food consumption
tell us nothing about whether seal feeding behaviour is having direct
or indirect effects on the abundance of various fish stocks, or on the
catches of various commercial fisheries,16 including cod.

The correct interpretation of the estimates of consumption by seals of
commercially important prey can be found in the NAFO Council paper
itself.15 The authors noted that such estimates are merely "one of the
first steps in trying to understand the dynamics between seal
predation and commercial fisheries." Toward that goal, they noted that
"significant advances [toward understanding the relationship between
seal predation and commercial fisheries] will not be achieved until
more is known about the abundance of small fish and other sources of
natural mortality."15

In conclusion, while estimates of prey consumption by seals may
provide some measure of the potential for competition between seals
and commercial fisheries, they alone tell us nothing about whether
such competition is actually occurring. 16

6. Do harp seals selectively feed on the livers of cod?

While such selective feeding has been observed in seabirds, it has
never been documented in harp seals.

For many years now, fishers in eastern Canada have claimed that harp
seals selectively feed on the livers (or "stomachs") of cod and
discard the rest of the body. They further claim that such partial
consumption of prey would not be detected in routine stomach content
analyses, the usual method for determining harp seal diets. This view
of harp seal feeding resurfaced in March 1999, when John Efford,
Newfoundland's Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, released a
videotape showing large numbers of dead cod on the bottom of Bonavista
Bay, many with their bellies gaping, "after a group of seals crowded
codfish into a bay and started feasting."17

Harp seals are not shown on the video, however, crowding codfish into
a bay; nor are they shown feasting (or even feeding). Nonetheless, the
situation described is somewhat reminiscent of harp seals and seabirds
feeding on aggregations of arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) -- a small
energy-rich fish, which is not commercially exploited -- in the
eastern Canadian arctic.18 Finley et al. noted that "the birds often
consumed only the liver of the cod" whereas "many of the fish" in the
stomach of one adult female harp seal examined "were still intact."

Similar events involving harp seals and birds feeding on Atlantic cod
have not, to our knowledge, been described in the literature and are
not captured on Mr Efford's video. Nonetheless, the video, together
with the available literature, usefully provide some alternative
explanations for finding cod in Bonavista Bay with their bellies
"ripped out." They also point the way to resolving the old conundrum:
do harp seals, on occasion, exhibit this sort of feeding behaviour on
Atlantic cod?

Lacking documented evidence that harp seals partially consume their
prey raises the question, how one would ever know if they do, on
occasion, exhibit such behaviour? The first line of evidence would be
expected to come from analyses of harp seal stomach contents and
literally thousands have been examined over the past 50 years.19
Contrary to recent media reports, some quoting fishery scientists who
obviously have never done stomach content analyses, the food in the
stomach may range from undigested (the seal ate just prior to being
killed) to fully digested (the seal was sampled long after its last
meal). In the former instance, the prey items are fresh, entire, and
easily identified. What one finds in such stomachs, generally, is
whole fish, stacked like sardines in a can, or whole invertebrates,
like shrimp or squid. In such instances, we are unaware of one
documented scientific report of fish livers in harp seal stomachs.
Absence of evidence, however, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
Yet, when seals have been observed eating cod, scientists reported
that "they swallowed them head first and whole,"20 consistent with the
observations obtained from stomach content analysis.

Nonetheless, anecdotal claims that harp seals do, on occasion,
partially consume cod (and perhaps other fish) cannot be rejected out
of hand by the available scientific evidence. But Mr Efford's video,
and the fishers who appear in it, provide other possible explanations.
Their comments remind us of a 1960's publication, by the late Wilfred
Templeman, which describes mass mortalities of cod, such as the one
depicted in the video.21 Templeman suggested that such events are
triggered by cold temperatures and it is possible that the video
actually captures one such event. The fishers in the video go on to
explain how some of the fish (which may well be in a weakened
condition) got trapped at low tide and were preyed upon by a variety
of birds (crows, eagles, etc.). Indeed, some of the fish shown in the
video have wounds that look more consistent with feeding by birds than
with feeding by harp seals. Other fish shown in the video with their
bellies open are reminiscent of fish that died and subsequently began
to decompose. (Anyone who has removed rotting fish from a gill net
will know that it is the belly region that rots first and it would be
useful to conduct some forensic pathology to determine if this is what
may have happened to some of the fish pictured in the video.)

Mr Efford's video thus provides a useful starting point for further
scientific investigations. In addition to necropsies on the dead cod,
it might also be instructive to place some cod in intertidal waters,
allowing some to be preyed upon by scavengers and others simply to
begin decomposition. Such an experiment would provide documented
evidence of the nature of the wounds left on fish as a result of
predator feeding behaviour and the appearance of fish left simply to
decompose. Video recordings could be used to document which predators
(seals, birds, etc.) took advantage of the situation and the results
(the fish remains) could be compared with those depicted in Mr
Efford's video.

Further, it would be very useful if future events, such as the one
that recently took place in Bonavista Bay, could be studied (and
extensively videotaped) to try to understand why the fish enter
shallow bays, and to document the presence or absence of seals,
seabirds, or other avian predators and their respective behaviours.

Until such work is done, the question remains: does the video provide
-- as Mr Efford claims -- the vital evidence to initiate a cull of
harp seals to benefit the cod fishery? The scientific answer is,
clearly, no. Even if Mr Efford were correct in assuming that seals
were responsible for what is seen on the video, it would simply
confirm that seals do eat cod, which as DFO seal biologist, Dr. Garry
Stenson, has already noted, "isn't particularly new to us." The video,
Stenson continued, still "doesn't tell us what the impact of seal
predation is on the total population of cod, and that is what you need
to know before you can draw any conclusions."22

7. Is a cull of the harp seal population justified on scientific
grounds?

Prof. W. Montevecchi, Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland
wrote, in 1995, that, "There is no scientific evidence that the
culling of large marine predators has ever benefited a commercial
fishery¼"23 In the specific case of Northwest Atlantic harp seals, the
1997 scientific workshop in St. Johns reiterated a conclusion first
reached by NAFO scientists in 198124 and repeated by DFO seal
specialist, Dr. W.D. Bowen, in 1992.25 It concluded, "It is not yet
possible to predict the effects of an increase or a decrease in the
size of the harp seal population on other ecosystem components,
including commercially exploited fish populations, or on the yields
obtained from them."5

In recent years, the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to the United
Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Marine Mammal Action Plan has
attempted to develop a scientific protocol outlining a methodology for
evaluating proposals to cull marine mammal populations with a view to
benefiting fisheries.26 Suffice it to say that the Canadian government
has only just begun to do the sorts of analyses required to determine
whether a cull of Northwest Atlantic harp seals is justified on
scientific grounds. There is at this time no scientific grounds for
culling the population.5,16,27

8. Would a reduced seal population benefit commercial fisheries?

There is no scientific evidence that a seal cull would be beneficial
to commercial fisheries. In fact, culling seal populations might well
be detrimental to the interests of a commercial fishery.

The simple minded, "common sense," view is that if seals eat fish,
then, in theory, fewer seals would mean more fish for commercial
fishers. Even if a reduced seal population resulted in an increased
number of fish in the ocean, it must first be remembered that there
are other predators in marine ecosystems, and any presumed increase in
the size of a commercially important fish stock could well be eaten by
those predators before being caught by fishers. An equally "common
sense" argument tells us that if seals eat predators of commercially
important fish, then fewer seals would mean fewer fish for fishers.

9. What will happen if harp seals are not culled?

In the absence of an increased seal hunt or cull, harp seal numbers
would be expected to stabilize. Indeed, the relatively poor
"condition," slow growth rates, delayed maturity and reduced fecundity
of harp seals in recent years are indicative of a population that has
reached the limits of its food base.5,28 It is quite possible, in
fact, that the Northwest Atlantic harp seal population already may
have stabilized as a result of natural processes, and now may be
declining because of the large and likely unsustainable hunts of the
past three years.29

As for cod, given adequate protection and time, their numbers will
likely recover over the next decade. Dr. R. Myers (formerly a DFO
research scientist and now a professor at Dalhousie University in
Halifax), for example, has stated, "Decimated fish populations like
the northern cod will recover if fishing is cut down."30 This view was
reiterated by 97 scientists who signed a 1995 petition on Canada's
sealing policy. "If fishing closures continue," they said, "the
evidence indicates that fish stocks will recover, and killing seals
will not speed the process."2

10. Would reducing the seal population restore the "balance of the
marine ecosystem?"

Proponents of culling seal populations frequently argue that it is a
necessary action to restore the "balance of nature," especially at
times when a number of once abundant fish stocks are depleted. The
fact of the matter is that the "balance of nature" is largely a myth.
As early as 1930, renowned ecologist Charles Elton wrote, "The balance
of nature does not exist, and perhaps has never existed."31 And, as
Mangel et al. wrote in 1997, "the belief of the 1970s - that for
management purposes one could assume that ecosystems were stable,
closed, and internally regulated and behaved in a deterministic manner
- has been replaced by recognition that ecosystems are open, in a
constant state of flux, usually without long-term stability, and
affected by many factors originating outside the system."32 In short,
there is no preordained balance of nature and there is no "right"
number of seals or other organisms in a natural system. Reducing the
size of a seal population cannot restore something that did not exist
in the first place.

11. Where the issue rests today.

The scientific evidence and arguments summarized above will never
convince those who believe that Northwest Atlantic harp seals "need"
to be culled. John Efford, for example, made the following remarkable
statement in Newfoundland's House of Assembly on 4 May 1998: ".I would
like to see the 6 million seals, or whatever number is out there,
killed and sold, or destroyed or burned. I do not care what happens to
them.the more they kill the better I will love it."33 In March 1999,
he called on the federal fisheries minister to increase the quota for
harp seals from the current 275,000 to between 475,000 and 575,000,
with a view to cutting the population in half.17

Contrast Mr Efford's views with a recent statement by the much
respected Sierra Club of Canada in its sixth annual Rio report card on
the government's performance on environmental matters. In a section
entitled "Commitment to the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Living
Marine Resources," the Sierra Club states: "Given DFO's appalling
record of over-estimating cod stocks, the government's willingness to
accept exaggerated estimates of seal populations and unsubstantiated
allegations of seals' impacts on commercial fisheries remains a cause
for concern."34

Concluding Remarks.

As the 1999 Canadian commercial seal hunt swings into full gear this
month, there are two over-riding questions. The first, highlighted by
the events of recent days, is whether a cull of harp seals is
justified on scientific grounds. The scientific answer to this
question is no and, for this reason, presumably, the Canadian
Department of Fisheries and Oceans is not considering a cull at this
time.35 As its 1999 Atlantic Seal Hunt Management Plan states: "More
research is needed to determine the nature and extent of the impact of
seal predation on the population dynamics of prey species."

The second question relates to the sustainability of the harp seal
hunt. In each of the last three years, the reported and estimated
landed catches of Northwest Atlantic harp seals by Canada and
Greenland have exceeded Canada's estimate of "replacement yield" --
the number of seals that can be removed without causing the population
to decline. If the estimated replacement yield were correct, then the
government has not been achieving its management objective of a
sustainable harvest and the population should now be declining. Landed
catches, however, only tell part of the story. When animals that are
killed but not landed by sealers are accounted for, it now appears
that somewhere between 400,000 and more than 500,000 harp seals have
been killed in each of the past three years.36 Yet, despite the
evidence that the population might be declining, Canada maintained the
total allowable catch of harp seals for 1999 at 275,000,37 the highest
permitted kill since the introduction of quota management in 1971.

The question of the status of the Northwest Atlantic harp seal
population and the sustainability of current levels of hunting will be
revisited following an aerial survey of harp seal pup production in
March 1999. Following the aerial survey, further work on population
modeling to estimate total population size and trends will be required
to investigate the implications of various management options
regarding the future of Canada's annual seal hunt.

Notes and Sources


1 Hutchings, J.A. and R.A. Myers. 1994. What can be learned from the
collapse of a renewable resource? Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, of
Newfoundland and Labrador. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic
Sciences 51: 2126-2146.


2 Anon. 1995. Comment on Canada's Sealing Policy. A petition signed by
97 scientists from 15 countries, at the 11th Biennial Conference on
the Biology of Marine Mammals, Orlando, Florida, 14-18 December 1995.


3 Anon. 1997. Understanding the Seal Fishery. Department of Fisheries
and Oceans web page.
http://www.ncr.dfo.ca/communic/seals...ta/utsf3_e.htm


4 Stenson, G. 1996. Email from Garry Stenson, Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, to Kate Sanderson, NAMMCO. (Obtained from DFO through
Access to Information legislation).


5 Anon. 1997. Harp Seal-Fishery Interactions in the Northwest
Atlantic: Toward Research & Management Actions. International
Scientific Workshop, 24-27 February 1997. Canadian Centre for
Fisheries Innovation, Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland.
41 pp.


6 For perspective, it must be remembered that a number of commercially
important fish stocks off Canada's East coast collapsed in the early
1990s. The Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock of primary interest to
Newfoundlanders and to the sealing question is the northern cod stock.
It occurs in Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) zones
2J, 3K and 3L (usually shortened to 2J3KL). This stock (or stocks,
more probably) sustained fisheries off the coast of Labrador and the
East coast of Newfoundland for centuries. Considered to be the richest
of the eastern Canadian stocks, it is also the most northern of the
commercially important Northwest Atlantic stocks. Its growth rate is
slow and its age at maturity old, relative to other stocks.


7 Anon. 1998. Stock status report - DFO Science. Department of
Fisheries and Oceans.
http://www.nwafc.nf.ca/english/ssr/ssr97/2J3klcod.html.


8 Myers, R.A., G. Mertz and P.S. Fowlow. 1997. Maximum population
growth rates and recovery times for Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua. Fish.
Bull. 95:762-772.


9 Schrank, W.E. nd. The Newfoundland Fishery: Past, Present, and
Future. pp. 35-70. In. Subsidies and depletion of world fisheries.
Case Studies. WWF Endangered Seas Campaign. Anderssen, E. 1998.
Despair greets loss of TAGS money. The Globe and Mail. 9 May 1998. p
A3


10 Greenspon, E. 1998. Ottawa approves new aid for fishery. East, West
Coasts get $925 million. The Globe and Mail. 12 June 1998. p. A1.
Ayed, N. 1998. Post-TAGS plan lacking if figures are true: MPs. The
Canadian Press. St. John's Evening Telegram. 13 June. p. 5. Gherson,
G. 1998. Pressure sparks new fishery crisis fund. Ottawa Citizen. 13
June. p. A4. Greenspon, E., E. Anderssen, C. McInnes, and R. Howard.
1998. Ottawa sweetens aid for fisheries. The Globe and Mail. 19 June
1998. pp. A1, A5. Walker, W. 1998. Tobin may have gone too far in
fishery bailout fight. Analysis. The Toronto Star. 20 June. p. A12.
Canadian Press. 1998. Canadian fisheries to get $1.1 billion. The
Toronto Star. 20 June. p. A12. Anderssen, E. Fishery package spurs
resentment. Ministers escorted out as angry Newfoundlanders accuse
them of 'destroying our lives.' The Globe and Mail. 20 June. p. A4.
Anon. 1998. Fishing for solutions. Editorial. The Toronto Star. 21
June 1998. p. F2. Anon. 1998. Ottawa's fishery" an expensive flounder.
Editorial. The Globe and Mail. 22 June. p. A16.


11 Department of Fisheries and Oceans. nd. Atlantic Coast Landed
Values, by Region. DFO Web Site. Http://www.
ncr.dfo.ca/communic/statistics/landings.


12 Bliss, M. 1987. Northern Enterprise. Five centuries of Canadian
Business. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto. 640 pp.


13 Statistics Canada. nd. Gross domestic product at factor cost,
primary industries. CANSIM Matrix 4677. http://WWW.
StatCan.CA/english/Pgdb/Economy/Primary/prim03.htm.


14 Statistics Canada. 1997. Gross Domestic Product at Factor cost by
Industry in Millions of Dollars. Newfoundland - Terre Neuve.
1984-1996. Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 15-203 XPB. p. 9.
Statistics Canada. 1997. Provincial Gross Domestic Product by Industry
1984-1997. Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 15-203 XPB. p. 5.


15 Hammill, M. and G.B. Stenson. 1997. Estimated prey consumption by
harp seals (Phoca groenlandica), grey seals (Halichoerus grypus),
harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and hooded seals (Cystophora cristata)
in the Northwest Atlantic. NAFO SCR Doc. 97/40. 37 pp.


16 Lavigne, D.M. 1996. Ecological interactions between marine mammals,
commercial fisheries, and their prey: unravelling the tangled web.
Studies of high-latitude seabirds. 4. Trophic relationships and
energetics of endotherms in cold ocean systems. Canadian Wildlife
Service. Occasional paper 91: 59-71.


17 Hamilton, G. 1999. Nfld. Video casts seals as villains in 'killing
fields' of northern cod: Minister steals a tactic. National Post, 9
March 1999. P. A1.


18 Finley, K.J., Bradstreet, M.S.W., and G.W. Miller. 1990. Summer
feeding ecology of harp seals (Phoca groenlandica) in relation to
Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) in the Canadian high Arctic. Polar
Biology, 10. 609-618.


19 Wallace, S.D., and D.M. Lavigne. 1992. A review of stomach contents
of harp seals (Phoca groenlandica) from the Northwest Atlantic. IMMA
Technical Report No. 92-03 (Revised).


20 Pemberton D., Merdsoy, B., Gales, R., and Renouf, D. 1994. The
interaction between offshore cod trawlers and harp (Phoca
groenlandica) and hooded (Cystophora cristata) seals off Newfoundland,
Canada. Biological Conservation 68, 123-127.


21 Templeman, W. 1965. Mass mortalities of marine fishes in the
Newfoundland area presumably due to low temperature. International
Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, Special Publication
No. 6. ICNAF Environmental Symposium, Rome 1964. Pp 137-147.


22 Stenson, G. 1999. VOCM-AM News. St. John's. 10 March 1999.


23 Montevecchi, W.A. 1996. Introduction. Studies of high-latitude
seabirds. 4. Trophic relationships and energetics of endotherms in
cold ocean systems. Canadian Wildlife Service. Occasional paper 91:
7-9.


24 Anon. 1981. Report on Special Meetings of Scientific Council,
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. 23-26 November 1981.
Dartmouth, Canada. NAFO SCS Doc. 81/XI/29. pp. 14-15.


25 Bowen, W.D. 1992. Book Review. Marine Mammal Science, 8: 94-95.


26 Anon. 1995. Tobin Looks at Ways of Expanding the Seal Harvest.
Department of Fisheries and Oceans. News Release NR-HQ-95-07E. January
26, 1995. Here, a distinction must be made between a hunt, the
sustainable "harvest" of a natural resource that, by definition is
meant to remove some or all of the so-called surplus production for
direct economic benefit, while maintaining the exploited population at
some predetermined level in perpetuity, and a cull, which is designed
to reduce a population from its current level in order to achieve some
other, indirect management objective, such as reducing perceived
conflicts between seals and commercial fisheries. While the objective
of the Canadian seal hunt is often said to be a sustainable harvest,
it is also claimed to have the objective of benefiting recovering fish
stocks. As such the current Canadian seal hunt is also a cull. For
additional information and discussion, see Meisenheimer, P. Marine
mammal culls as fisheries management: insights from Canada's harp seal
hunt. Unpublished ms. Anon. 1992. Marine Mammal/Fishery Interactions:
Analysis of Cull Proposals. Report of the Meeting of the Scientific
Advisory Committee of the Marine Mammal Action Plan. United Nations
Environment Programme. 27 November - 1 December 1992. Liege, Belgium.
30 pp. Anon. 1995. Marine Mammal /Fishery Interactions: Analysis of
Cull Proposals. Third Meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee of
the Marine Mammal Action Plan. 24-27 August 1994. Crowborough,
England. UNEP(OCA)/MM.SAC.3.1. 10 May 1995. 28 pp.


27 Anderson, D. 1998. Letter to Ms. Debra Probert. 19 May 1998. Note:
In this letter, Mr Anderson claims that "A number of mainstream
environmental groups, such as World Wildlife Fund, agree that a
controlled and responsible harvest of the seal herd is appropriate."
In response, Monte Hummel, President of World Wildlife Fund Canada,
wrote to Mr Anderson on 2 June 1998, clarifying WWF's position. Hummel
wrote: ".we have always disagreed with any claim or conclusion that
reductions in numbers of seals assist with recovery or conservation of
marine ecosystems, or components such as cod stocks.I would be
grateful if you would ensure that all staff in your department fully
appreciate the WWF concern that predator control is not at present a
scientifically justifiable action for the recovery of fish stocks, and
further that DFO no longer suggests that WWF supports this argument."


28 Sjare, B., G.B. Stenson, and W.G. Warren. 1995. Summary of female
harp seal reproductive parameters in the Northwest Atlantic. NAFO SCR
Doc. 95/37. 9 pp.


29 Lavigne, D.M. 1999. Cull quota puts seals in the red. BBC Wildlife,
March 1999. Pp. 20-21.


30 Then DFO scientist, R.A. Myers, quoted in Strauss, S. 1995.
Decimated stocks will recover if fishing stopped, study finds. East
coast decline in cod resulted from overfishing, not seals. The Globe
and Mail. 25 August 1995.


31 Elton, C. 1930. Animal Ecology and Evolution. Oxford University
Press, New York.


32 Mangel, M., et al. 1996. Principles for the conservation of wild
living resources. Ecological Applications 6: 338-362.


33 Efford, J. 1998. House of Assembly Proceedings, Province of
Newfoundland and Labrador. 4 May. Vol XLIII. No. 18.


34 Sierra Club of/du Canada. 1998. The Sixth Annual Rio Report, 1998.
Grading the Government of Canada and the Provinces on their
Environmental Commitments. 18 June 1998. Sierra Club of Canada.
Ottawa, Canada.


35 Department of Fisheries and Oceans. 1999. Atlantic Seal Hunt 1999
Management Plan. DFO Web site.
http://www.ncr.dfo.ca/COMMUNIC/seals/eng/sealENG.htm


36 Lavigne, D.M. 1999. Estimating Total Kill of Northwest Atlantic
Harp Seals, 1994-1998. Marine Mammal Science, in press.


37 Anon. 1999. Anderson Announces 1999 Atlantic Seal Management
Measures. Department of Fisheries and Oceans News Release.
NR-HQ-99-1E. January 6, 1999.



D.M. Lavigne, S. Fink, D. Johnston, and P. Meisenheimer.

IMMA Technical Briefing 99-02

16 March 1999

http://www.imma.org/codvideo/harpcod_QA.html

I got something to say to you ignorant, arrogant Brits, and others about the
seal hunt. Clean up your own back yards before complaining about ours! How
many fox hunts happen each year, eh? Oh, let me guess, it is considered
"humane" to hunt down a fox with 20 baying dogs and then kill it for the
fur. During the seal hunt, damn near every part of the animal is used... And
further, man is the ONLY natural prediator these creatures have, as the
others have been hunted to near extinction decades ago.

So I say, take your pompous ass up out of here. When the fox hunt, and other
regional hunts in other countries has been put to a stop, then, and only
then would I not think of you as a bunch of bitchy little hypocrites worthy
of nthing more then the toilet paper I wipe my ass with.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 03:17:59 -0500, "Jeff T"
wrote:

I got something to say to you ignorant, arrogant Brits,

Shut it or we'll take our continent back.

and others about the
seal hunt. Clean up your own back yards before complaining about ours! How
many fox hunts happen each year, eh? Oh, let me guess, it is considered
"humane" to hunt down a fox with 20 baying dogs and then kill it for the
fur. During the seal hunt, damn near every part of the animal is used... And
further, man is the ONLY natural prediator these creatures have, as the
others have been hunted to near extinction decades ago.

What on earth gives you the impression we support fox hunting? in fact
the perverts who enjoy fox hunting would also enjoy beating the brains
out of a seal pup.

Don't worry though, we'll soon have fox hunting banned in England, it
already is in Scot land. lol

So I say, take your pompous ass up out of here. When the fox hunt, and other
regional hunts in other countries has been put to a stop, then, and only
then would I not think of you as a bunch of bitchy little hypocrites worthy
of nthing more then the toilet paper I wipe my ass with.

I doubt you wipe it anyhow.


Cheerio

--
To avoid grizzlies, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game advises hikers
to wear noisy little bells on clothes and carry pepper spray. Also watch
for signs of activity: Black bear scat is smaller and contains berries;
grizzly scat has little bells in it and smells like pepper.

Hey ****-wit. they dont kill baby harp seals. Eben the National Geographic
says so.

I have seen you retards using those picture from the 70s still.

I am going to Canada for skiing.

"KrakAttiK" wrote in message
...
March 23, 2004

Fri, April 16, 2004

The slaughter of the truth
By MICHAEL HARRIS -- For the Ottawa Sun




Not much has changed since that brilliant March day back in 1981 on the St.
John's waterfront when Captain Morrissey Johnson threw a Greenpeace
demonstrator off the deck of the Lady Johnson before setting sail for the
annual Newfoundland seal hunt.

I can still hear the smack. The young lady hit the wharf with a thud heard
around the world. The crowd of Newfoundlanders cheered lustily. They were
there for the traditional blessing of the fleet, wishing safe passage for
their "swilers" and they didn't appreciate the international condemnation
and humiliation that the "come-from-aways" were dishing out.

What their urban denouncers did not know is that many of the people on the
dock that day had lost family members in the annual trek to the hunt which
had been going on since 1800. In the 19th century, the seal hunt, then a
land-based harvest, accounted for a staggering one-third of Newfoundland's
exports. Much of the island's history has been written in human blood in the
twin quest for cod and seal.

To this day, seal flippers are a hot commodity on the St. John's waterfront
every spring, the main ingredient in flipper pie. Newfoundland is a place
where rural people still have their feed of moose, caribou, seal, ptarmigan,
and wild salmon according to the season. There are no sushi restaurants in
places like Harbour Grace, Twillingate, or Harbour Breton. But there is the
land and sea and everything in them.

All these years later, emotions are still running high. In the United
Kingdom, the Independent made the seal hunt its lead story under the
headline, "The Bloody Slaughter." Even the BBC intoned that up to 350,000
"baby seals" would be killed this season, a gross distortion of the facts.
And so the standoff continues. Newfoundlanders sorely resent their
vilification by animal rights activists and the protesters continue to
display an appalling ignorance and opportunistic exploitation of the seal
hunt. Brigitte Bardot may have been replaced by Paris Hilton as the poster
girl of the anti-sealing lobby, but the appeal is unchanged; a triumph of
marketing over matter.

Forgotten in the bloody pictures of "whitecoats" being clubbed to death is
the harsh reality of all animal slaughter. Whether it is chickens in a mass
production facility, cattle in a stockyard, or seals on the March ice off
Newfoundland's northeast coast, there is nothing pleasant about the
commercial harvesting of any living creature for human consumption --
regardless of what part is being consumed.

Most of our urban kill floors are dark inner sanctums the public never gets
to see. The great difference in the seal hunt is that it is an outdoor
abattoir operation involving wild animals. The blood that is spilled is
there for all to see. The impact is gruesome enough against the dazzling
white snow and ice, but when you depict the slaughter of a baby seal that
looks more like a stuffed toy than a creature in the wild it is emotionally
devastating.

It was largely because of that horrific image that the International Fund
for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was able to raise $80 million a year to fund their
anti-seal hunt protests in the 1980s -- an amount six times greater than the
entire budget of the Newfoundland Fisheries Department to run an industry
and fight back against well-financed detractors.

Newfoundlanders are appalled by the hypocrisy factor. The French could
force-feed geese to bloat their livers for foie gras, calves could be
dispatched by the thousands for their livers and veal cutlets, lambs could
be butchered for their prized rack, and cattle might be dismembered alive on
slaughterhouse assembly lines, but there weren't many photo ops (or for that
matter photographers), for those far vaster but largely accepted varieties
of death on wheels.

The icefields are another matter. Protesters documented, and in some cases,
orchestrated, the most horrific images imaginable in which Newfoundlanders
came across as sadistic brutes who routinely skinned baby seals alive for
fun and profit. The protesters were so good at public relations that by 1983
the large-vessel seal hunt in Newfoundland was closed as country after
country, including the United States, caved in to Greenpeace and the IFAW
and banned the sale of seal products within their borders.

More importantly, the real poster star of the anti-sealing campaign, the
cute and cuddly whitecoat, has not been hunted since 1987, when it was given
legal protection by the federal government -- protection that extends to
this day. Yet when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans sanctioned this
year's cull of 300,000 harp seals, the anti-sealing lobby reproduced
pictures of the same animals that are no longer being hunted to condemn a
practice that they have seriously distorted and never understood. The
U.S.-based Humane Society is taking full-page ads in big American newspapers
to urge a travel boycott on Canada -- the same group that was silent on the
destruction of migratory salmon stocks at the hands of U.S. fishermen.

The successful closing down of the annual seal hunt has been devastating to
coastal communities in Newfoundland. Traditionally, the hunt provided
fishermen with their first cash of the year and a means of outfitting
themselves for the new fishing season. Since 1992, when the cod fishery was
closed because of gross human overfishing, the intervention on behalf of the
harp and hooded seal has led to an explosion in the size of their herds at
the worst possible moment. In 1983, when the commercial hunt was closed,
there were 3.1 million harp seals and roughly 450,000 hooded seals. Today,
the herd has doubled in size, and that is bad news for Newfoundland's
decimated cod stocks.

Seals are prodigious feeders. They eat fish to the tune of 6% of their body
weight per day. Although cod comprise only 3% of the seal's diet, the size
of the herd has a deadly multiplier effect. In 1994, seals consumed 88,000
metric tonnes of cod off Newfoundland's northeast coast, compared to just
24,000 tonnes caught by the commercial fishery in the last year of the cod
fishery before the closure. The grim fact comes down to this: Whether seals
eat juvenile cod (38,000 fish to the tonne) or the cod's favorite food,
caplin, they have a profound effect on the ocean's food web when their
numbers are very high and the northern cod has been all but wiped out.
Protecting one animal in the ocean's ecosystem without understanding the
impact of the intervention on others is not compassion but tampering. For
years, the sorcerer's apprentice has been loose on the Grand Banks. Perhaps
that is why Greenpeace, traditionally a vocal opponent of the hunt, has
decided not to campaign against the cull this year.

Did the seals wipe out the northern cod? No, man did. Is every part of the
seal hunt noble? Of course not. The harvesting of animals for their penises
which are a hot aphrodisiac in China, is deplorable. (The practice has been
banned.) But for the 11,000 Newfoundlanders who still get an important part
of their income from today's limited seal hunt, they are not there to feed
China's erotic fantasies or skin baby animals alive. They are there to cling
to their bald rock and make a living with what's at hand, just as they've
always done.

Within the regulations of the hunt and the fiats of basic humanity, they
should be left alone to do it.

I ****ing love killing seals and will always love killing seals and
that's that. If you don't like it then stay out of my country or if you
live here then **** off and head on back to Afghanistan or where ever
the hell you came from.

Hey ****-wit. they dont kill baby harp seals. Eben the National Geographic
says so.

I have seen you retards using those picture from the 70s still.

I am going to Canada for skiing.