Seal slaughter in Newfoundland

Forest and Bird, Issue 280, 1 May 1996, Page 10

Seal slaughter in Newfoundland

THIS YEAR sealers off Newfoundland have killed the largest number of harp seals in more than a decade. The hunters — many of them former fishermen, unemployed since the collapse of the Grand Banks cod fishery in 1992 — reached the government quota of 250,000 adult harp seals in April. The total kill was five times more than last year, and the first time sealers have reached the quota since, in an effort to salvage the hunt’s image, the hunting of baby white-coated seals was banned in the early 1980s. The Canadian government, which subsidises the hunt, maintains that a burgeoning harp seal population is further endangering already depleted cod stocks off the Atlantic coast. It argues that seal numbers have doubled in the past 15 years and that cod makes up some three to five percent of seal diets. Yet independent fisheries scientists disagree with the official analysis that killing seals will help the cod stocks improve. They question the accuracy of government figures on the size of the herd and point out that the contribution of cod in seal diets is based on old studies from before the collapse of the cod fishery. These scientists also point out that the seals are only a small part of a complex marine ecosystem so that no matter how much fish they eat, there is no guarantee that dead seals mean more cod in the sea. David Lavigne, a seal biologist at the university of Guelph, Ontario, says that cod have other predators, such as Ilex squid, that are also eaten by seals. "The government has not even begun to do the multispecies assessment needed to predict the impact of killing seals," he says. The International Society for Marine Mammalogists also stated late last year that "the evidence indicates that [cod]

stocks will recover, and killing seals will not speed that process". Meanwhile sealers are arguing for an increase in the quota. They claim that European markets for seal pelts have strengthened this year in response to a weakening of the anti-fur lobby and that markets in North America have been found for seal blubber and meat. There is also a ready and growing underground market in seal penises used as aphrodisiacs in Chinese medicine.