(published
by the Halifax Herald,
March 29, 2006)
Seal
hunt ecologically irresponsible 
Nobody
said that the seal hunt was cruel, and nobody complained that
Canada kills whitecoat pups, at the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans’ latest public consultation on seal hunting.
At
the seal forum last
November, only one criticism was raised against the seal
hunt. It was argued that the seal hunt plan is unacceptable
because it is not "ecosystem-based," and DFO was reminded
of its legal obligation under the Oceans Act to use ecosystem-based
conservation plans.
A
stable, healthy ocean ecosystem needs large natural predators,
and all other big predators in Atlantic Canada, besides seals,
have recently been eliminated. Scientists accept these facts:
This is in reference to the huge numbers of large predatory
fish that long competed with seals to eat small fish.
Today,
essentially all big fish are gone, and rising seal numbers have
not nearly made up for the loss. To maintain a healthy natural
predator presence in the ocean, therefore, none of the relatively
few surviving fish predators should now be killed, and that
includes seals.
Natural
predators play key roles; and entire ecosystems, including the
prey species, do better when predators survive too. Eliminating
large predators degrades ecosystems, and this occurs everywhere
from forests to grasslands to oceans.
A
mass harvest of seals today carries a greater ecological risk
to the ocean than it did when great hordes of large predatory
fish shared the waters (cod, shark, halibut, etc.) and shared
the seals’ ecological role.
The
truth is that today’s ocean scenario, both the potentialities
and the risks, is not remotely like it was in earlier times.
Now
the web of sea life appears strangely unstable, teetering. If
we take the seals, we remove the last natural predators from
a once robust web. What collapses then?
The
platitude that seal hunting is a time-honoured "tradition"
becomes irrelevant.
Although
seals and ice floes may look exactly as they did in past centuries,
what lies beneath the surface has changed dramatically for the
worse.
The
food supply for fish is failing, and the oxygen
content of seawater is falling, as the ecosystem becomes
increasingly poor and degraded. Under this scenario, insisting
on targeting the last surviving natural fish predator courts
ecological disaster.
The
worst of it is that there are DFO scientists who are aware of
this problem, but who are not permitted to speak openly about
it.
These
scientists were not invited to "advise" the "seal
managers." The managers wanted "science advice"
only on the size of the seal herds, refusing to consider information
about the state of the ecosystem, including the now serious
shortage of fish predators.
When
it was explained at the seal forum that DFO scientists have
published much relevant ecosystem science, including a rationale
for protecting fish predators, and that this information should
logically translate into advice that managers not approve another
seal hunt – the reply was silence.
But
outside the forum, a DFO official remarked that nobody reads
those ecosystem papers anyhow.
DFO
managers were formally asked to consider science advice from
their own scientists, regarding how modern ecosystem objectives
should be used in planning the seal hunt. But they refused,
claiming this was unnecessary.
Amid
hyperbole about "science on the cutting edge" and
"international leadership," DFO boasts of using a
new "ecosystem approach" to ocean conservation.
But
they are not, because the new seal hunt plan is, like all previous
ones, based only on an outmoded "single-species approach."
This
method was long used by fishery managers: Numbers of fish or
seals were estimated and then some fraction was declared as
the quota for a "sustainable fishery." However, this
simple strategy has failed spectacularly – think: cod crash.
Science
today knows a better way, but DFO refuses to admit it.
DFO
was likely pleased to see animal rights groups again denouncing
this spring’s harp seal hunt as brutal. That was their
cue to launch the standard rebuttal: "The seal hunt is
humane! We have scientific proof of that! And we don’t
kill whitecoat pups!"
OK,
sure DFO, we’ve heard all that before. Now please explain
why you refuse to meet your obligation to safeguard the future
of Canada’s marine life by using modern scientific methods,
by meeting your legal obligation to Canadians to use an ecosystem-based
approach to conservation.
Why
do you refuse to listen even to your own scientists?
Why,
after the disastrous losses of marine life over the last two
decades, does Canada still have government science muzzled by
the fishing industry?
Debbie
MacKenzie is a director of the Grey
Seal Conservation Society.
