...see also: (http://novanewsnet.ukings.ns.ca/nova_news_3588_4962.html)
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Cape Breton fishermen's seal hunt limited. Excerpts from an editorial by Chris Hayes, with comments by the Grey Seal Conservation Society(GSCS)
Sydney - The first commercial grey seal hunt in Atlantic Canada got off to a slow start this winter. Clarrie MacKinnon, a consultant for the North of Smokey-Inverness South Fishermen's Association, estimated less than 500 grey seals were harvested.
"This is a very limited hunt." Fisheries Department spokesman Jerry Conway said the seals were harvested by fishermen from Cape Breton, who have been licensed as seal hunters, at rookeries in an area of the Atlantic from near Canso to Ecum Secum.
Hunters have been getting an average of $37 for the grey seal pelts from Newfoundland companies, said Conway, the marine mammal adviser for the Fisheries Department.
The peak time for a grey seal hunt is January and February when the pelts of animals born mostly in mid-January have reached the stage in demand in the marketplace. The hunt is over for this year because the seals are in the water, he said.
(GSCS: In Canada, Marine Mammal Regulations (MMR) are radically different from our US counterpart. Normally, grey seal whelping colonies are protected from "predacious harassment" until after the nursing and breeding stages…they are safeguarded under the designation term called "closed-time". However, if directed by DFO officials this regulation can be amended using a "variant order" (vary the closed-time) - the killing of roughly 500 seals (pups and adults) was this years outcome.
In the United States the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) has been in place since 1972. This gives the reader an idea of how far Canada lags behind the U.S. in a legislative guide for protecting and conserving marine mammals. Under the U.S. act there are clauses limiting "harassment" and these include: "the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption or behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering." The act covers a variety of marine life, from whales, dolphins, seals, polar bears, and sea otters, to name a few. At one end of the spectrum, if a grey seal is harmed or harassed in the U.S., fines can be as high as $10,000. However, here in Canada, they are still legally killed.)
The seals have been cited as a major factor in the failure of groundfish stocks to rebound. In the 1980s, the grey seal population on the East Coast was less than 50,000. The herd is now estimated at about 300,000...
(GSCS: At one time, healthy robust populations of grey seals totaled in the millions - this gives us some idea of how far we still have to go. The environmental destruction of this living history, from all indications, has not yet been erased.)
