Seal Alert-SA Press Release, July 4, 2007.
Things are really hotting up. Public protests and posters up on the star-wall was the start. Dutch and German import bans the beginning. Excellent articles in The Star, News 24, The Cape Times, German Media, The Namibian, Radio 702, The Mercury, and on Legal Brief. Weekend Argus carried stories, as did an excellent article by Eleanor Momberg of the Sunday Independent, with headlines screaming, “Ravaged by starvation, Namibia’s rapidly shrinking population of Cape fur seals is accussed of out-fishing the high-tech trawler fleets” with four massive pics of sealers clubbing baby seals. More is coming, including maybe CNN, and The Namibian just published an excellent piece written by Adam Hartman, “Word Maths, Doesn’t Add Up – Animal Activists”, please click on link to read full story, allafrica.com/stories.html. To which the below answers all.
Marine Scientists Refute
Namibian’s Minister Claimed Fishery Losses Through Seal Predation
As anger grows about the continuing baby seal cull in Namibia
Upon announcing a continued 80 000 baby seal cull, starting July 1, 2007, rolling for next three years. Information Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah motivated this by stating, “The sharp increase of the seal population is endangering the fishing industry because the seals kill (not eat) around 900 000 tons of fish each year”.
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert-SA replies, number 1) baby seals dont eat fish they suckle milk from their mothers, 2) the seal population has been in decline since 1993, 3) the mass starvation of 95% of the pups and half the adult seals last year implies they ate very little fish 4) Namibia’s doubling of fishing quotas over the last decade and a half, from 300 000 tons to 600 000 tons, is the sole cause for the current fishing industries endangerment, and the threat to seals future survival.
The Seals alleged 900 000 ton consumption of fish annually (half of which is non-commercial fish species), is simple that of a computer model, that has no basis in a starving seals reality.
It is Namibia’s doubled fishery capacity and landings since independence that should be modelled.
In the latest scientific published fish consumption model for Cape fur seals (published in June 2006), a study carried out over an 8-year period in the three seal culling mainland colonies of Namibia, two South African marine scientists and one Namibian scientist, who heads the Marine Mammal section at the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries, refute the Information Minister’s seal consumption claims.
The conclusions of their research states, “Although seals and fisheries utilize the same commercial prey resources, this does not automatically imply that there is competition between them. To determine the extent to which competition exists between seals and fisheries, additional information is required, such as fish distribution and abundance, feeding effort, amount of fish utilized and size classes utilized by seals and fisheries in time and space, the response of fish to changes in predation rate, the response of seals, fisheries and other predators (snoek, hake, sharks, seabirds, whales and dolphins) to changes in fish abundance, and the response of the market to fish supply.Unless all this information, which is usually difficult to obtain, is available, competition between two resource utilizers cannot be determined effectively“.
Although Namibian Ministry claims to be “harvesting seals in line with the principles of sustainable management under the Constitution, fully supporting the international concept of eco-system approach to fisheries management”.
The three year rolling cull of 80 000 pups and 6000 bull seals per year, can hardly be considered sustainable when considering that the 2006 mass die-off equalled that of the 2000 mass die-off and the 1994 mass die-off of the seals, in which, 95% of the pups died and over 300 000 adults (half the population of seals).
South Africa also fully subscribes to an eco-system approach to fisheries management, has a no-cull seal policy and has written into legislation policies which aim to ensure sufficient availability of food for seals and seabirds in the wild to sustain populations (through legislation to ensure adequate escapement of prey from commercial fisheries). The result is our Cape fur seals have no starved to death in mass and we equally harvest 550 000 fishery tons. Clearly the several mass die-off’s the seals have experienced since Namibia doubled its capacity and fish landings, has illustrated that Namibia has got eco-system approach management upside-down.
The threat from over-exploited commercial fisheries to seals is even greater than the annual cull by the sealers. Natural pup mortality within first year of life, has increased >from 25% to 62%. Now 30% of all pups born die with the first month of birth, and a further 32% die, between the months of February and the July start of the sealing season. In what can be called as an environmental/overfishing cull. To this must be added Namibia’s cull of 80 000 pups and 6000 bulls. What is more, the Commission on Sealing in 1990, found that just one sector of the thirteen fishing sector, the trawling sector, drowns up to 30 000 seals annually. Double this fishery capacity, as Namibia has done over the last decade, doubles the seal mortality annually. Then there is the blind-eye approach to thousands of fishermen taking arms, guns and explosives to sea to kill seals, or the thousands of seals mutilated from entanglement in discarded fishing gear each year.
The mortality amongst Cape fur seals, just goes on and on, the highest recorded marine mammal unnatural mortality in the world.
Namibia needs to understand one thing, what they started (culling seals) we cannot stop, but when economic and tourism boycotts start to take hold. The damage will be permanent for both seals and Namibians.
Support the call to end it now, as South Africa did in 1990.
For the Seals
Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA
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