By Rachel Braeuer
Illustration by Eleanor Qu and April Alayon
When 70,000 people are murdered because someone perceives them as taking what’s not theirs, we rightfully and accurately call it genocide. When it happens to seals, we laud it for its potential economic boosts.
A few weeks ago, a proposition to senate was made. It called for a paid cull of 70,000 grey seals in the gulf of St. Lawrence over a four-year period in an attempt to boost the numbers of Atlantic cod, and by extension the fishing industry in the Maritimes. Despite critics who questioned the “science” behind the plan, it was successfully endorsed. The debates are beginning to wane now, but for many the question remains: why plan an experimental cull on a species to see how it affects another if the science present does not suggest this hypothesis of less seals equals more cod to be true at all? There are questions that have yet to be asked, though: what science is present? why isn’t it being discussed at all? and why are the motion backers already concerned with the economic value of seals?
The science present
The most terrifying thing about the entire proposal is that grey seals don’t really eat that much cod. The study that the proposed cull is based on indicates that male grey seals’ diets consist of 24 per cent Atlantic cod at the very most, and that is only in a particular area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence at a particular time of year. On average, Atlantic cod comprise around 10 per cent of grey seal diets. These studies neglect to explain the other 80-90 per cent of their diet.
What they do note, however, is that grey seals aren’t picky eaters. They will basically eat whatever is around them and easily obtained, so it’s not as though they are targeting Atlantic cod en mass; they’re eating the percentage of cod that they do because that’s the percentage of cod available to them at any given time. This should be the takeaway from existing research. Rather, the studies surrounding the topic conclude that we can’t know what effect grey seals have on groundfish (cod) stocks until we do something about it and study them more; killing 70,000 should give a better research base. While it will do that, the suggestions made in the field’s research are not logical conclusions based on the data. Seal populations were increasing while cod populations were decreasing, but researchers couldn’t find a strong causal link between the two. The conclusion should be that further research is necessary, not that we should kill a bunch of seals and see what happens.
Seals prefer to eat sand eels, also known as sand lance, a small fish that swims in schools during the day, but burrows into the mud at night. Conclusive research found that seals showed preferential tendencies towards sand lance consumption as opposed to cod. What sand lance and cod do share is a questionable fate due to climate change.
Studies based in the US indicate that their Atlantic cod stock is at a definitive risk if the ocean currents’ temperatures rise any further. Cod populations are moving farther north (which should be good for us) and may simply not return. With the gag order officiating over Canadian research-scientists, it’s highly possible that much of the same things are happening in Canada; we are simply not free to talk about it.
The sand lance is an even more slippery fish. In her 2007 thesis, Danish researcher Jane Windfeldt Behrens concluded that the Ammodytes (the Latin name for sand lance) native to Denmark were at a significant risk of dying due to hypoxia if global warming persisted in the way that it has. Because sand lance hide in the mud overnight, and global warming has reduced the amount of oxygen available to be absorbed by the sand lance while sleeping, they will either slowly suffocate during sleep, or will have to adapt and no longer hide at night, leaving them more vulnerable to predators. Things aren’t
ooking good for the poor little sand lances, especially if the numbers of hungry seals are increasing in numbers every year.
Two aquatic animals, one department
What happens when seals — who feast on sand lance like Vancouverites inhale spicy tuna rolls — get removed from the equation? Does that make life easier for the sand lance? Perhaps the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’s definition of the sand lance can illuminate this murky problem. “Together with dogfish and skates, sand lances (sand eels) may be one of the major unexploited fish resources of the northwest Atlantic,” read the opening lines of the fish’s description. Even more interesting is the fact that cod and other groundfish feed on the larvae of sand lances, placing them, grey seals, and Atlantic cod in a strange economic love triangle.
If the decreased numbers of grey seals pose less of a predatory risk to sand lances, then presumably sand lances would be able to reproduce at higher rates, and would create more larvae for cod stock to feed off of. If this is the case, the four-year trial cull could potentially increase cod stock in Canada, but not in the direct and ill-advised manner proposed. The delicate balance this economic triangle hangs on is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Less seals means more sand lances (assuming something else doesn’t eat them), which means more cod (assuming they don’t swim to colder northern waters). This, in turn, would benefit the fishing and sealing industries by providing more jobs and revenue for eastern Canada. Furthermore, it would create an overabundance of sand lances, which could lead to the fruition of new fish stock. For those who oppose the hunting of any aquatic animal, this is equally dismal news, but for those willing to lend the industry an ear, this wouldn’t be terrible. Why, then, is it being framed the way it is? Something doesn’t add up.
A brief history of sealing in Canada
Eastern Canada has received much criticism in the past for its annual seal hunt, and its economy has suffered since the European Union’s 2009 ban on seal imports. This ban reduced a pelt’s value by over 88 per cent, and should have come as a surprise to no one, as it has been lobbied for since the 1970s. Some of us may even remember the infamous 2005 PETA-leaked clip of sealers clubbing baby harp seals to death before they had reached the stage of development where it becomes legal to kill a seal.
Still, the seal hunt is an integral part of Maritime culture, or at least it’s embraced that way by many. Seal flipper pie has become synonymous with Newfoundland and Labrador, the same way poutine harkens to the street food available in Montreal. The local First Nations groups also lay ancestral claim to part of the seal hunt, but their haul accounts for only about 10 per cent of the entire hunt. While the cull isn’t the same thing as the seal hunt — the cull is supposed to simply be the paid killing of seals, not the killing of seals for economic purposes — support of either one in the face of waning foreign interest and nation-wide support panders to people who are invested in its perpetuation.
Who has a vested interest?
It’s interesting to see who proposed and is backing the cull. Fabian Manning is the chair of the Standing Senate Committee responsible for the proposal. As a conservative candidate for the Avalon riding, he lost to liberal Scott Andrews in the last two elections. He was also voted out of the then-Progressive Conservative caucus in 2005 for vocally opposing his party’s policy on crab management. Supporting this could prove useful in securing himself a lasting position as someone fit to represent Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Another supporter of the proposal is Celine Hervieux-Payette, who reached notoriety in 2006 when she personally responded to an American tourist couple’s open letter to all Canadian senators, which informed them that they cancelled their trip to the Maritimes after learning about Canada’s appalling seal hunt. Hervieux-Payette’s response argued that “the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners — mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.” was horrific, not the seal hunt. In 2009 she proposed the Universal Declaration on the Ethical Harvest of Seals, which looked to get national and international support for sealing, and hoped to have the declaration ratified by the UN.
“It is not in the habit of Canada to harvest seal without using up the resource,” Hervieux-Payette stated in response to the recent senate endorsement. “We must not get caught up in this way which is contrary to our traditions, our way of life, and the spirit of the Universal Declaration on the Ethical Harvest of Seals.” Hubley indicated that Canada should be looking into possible uses for seal products, like Omega-3 and meat.
This doesn’t sound like the rhetoric of people deeply concerned with the welfare of groundfish and cod stock. This sounds like people who have a vested interest in the sealing industry in Canada. While it would probably be next to impossible to find out, due to Canada’s privacy laws, it would be interesting to probe what kind of role is played by the members of this senate committee in Canada’s sealing industry.
Why you should be afraid, very afraid
The proposed four-year trial period of this cull could see temporary improvement in cod numbers and overall improvement to a number of industries in the Maritimes. Manning’s Avalon electoral district boasts an unemployment rate of 25.9 per cent, whereas the DTES had a reported rate of 11.3 per cent in 2006, despite Avalon resident’s mean income being more than twice that of the DTES average. If everything remains in its precarious balance, things could really improve for people looking for work in the Maritimes.
What can’t be guaranteed, however, is sustainability, given the vulnerability of two of the symbiotic tripod’s legs. In those four years, there is no guarantee that ocean temperatures or oxygen levels will remain the same, which could leave Atlantic cod in cold international waters, and sand lances suffocating to death. The secretive nature surrounding the cull seems to indicate that there’s more at play here than just an attempt to cultivate cod stock. As the study suggests, we won’t know all of the effects until the seals are dead and for sale, and we probably won’t fully understand the long-reaching effects until long after this is all said and done. In the meantime, don’t make any investments you can’t jump-ship from when the catches start to dwindle on the troller decks.
