Each year on the ice of Labrador and Newfoundland, the coming of spring, occurs most world slaughter of mammals. Hundreds of thousands of harp seals (Pedophiles grandiloquences) of between 12 days and 12 months of age die to death for their fur, their fat and their penises reach the Western market as luxury products, dietary or aphrodisiacs.
• For many years the killing has remained largely hidden from the world, but the advent of the Internet, especially, brings to retinas this shameful reality every spring. In 2005, for the first time, the various NGOs working to protect these animals have come together, creating an international coalition: The Protect Seals Network .
• In April (2009) the European Parliament will vote on a proposal to ban seal products, which must be imported, exported or even be transported in two countries of the European Union (Table 1).
• It is almost impossible to believe that in the XXI century, unsustainable activities like this that endanger the wildlife permit. The seal hunt is an indiscriminate and bloody career in the hunters ‘compete’ for killing the largest number of these mammals in the shortest time possible.
• Globally, Canada is a leader in the seal hunt with a quota of between 200,000 and 350,000 per year, followed by Greenland 165,000; Namibia, with 80,000 and Norway, with 14,000, according to information from the Humane Society International, a organization dedicated to the protection of animals.
• The Canadian government has a long history of mismanaging marine ecosystems, which has led to depletion of marine biodiversity and fisheries and the harp seal hunt have only short-term yields.
• Instead of creating jobs for economically disadvantaged sectors of Newfoundland the Canadian government subsidizes the seal hunt.
On the ice in front of the northeast coast of Canada, off Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence since 2003 takes the largest slaughter of marine mammals (harp seal) in the world. It is estimated that this year (2009) 338 thousand seals may die, according to the amount authorized “by the Canadian government. However, such contributions are hardly respected. It is estimated that the population is currently over 5.5 million head.
The St. Lawrence estuary in the North Atlantic, is one of the most beautiful scenery in Canada. The noise of the icebergs that are breaking down, the music of the shooting, the percussion of sticks and the hoarse bellowing of the animals desperate terror, falling one after another, it may be another charm. Canadian policy found in the slaughter of the last six years, a way to disguise the unemployment of fishermen by predation they suffer the sea.
The Arctic ecosystem is characterized, unlike tropical ecosystems due to its short food chain and limited biodiversity. This makes biological systems particularly fragile and dependent on a plethora of its various components.
The biological wealth is distributed between ice sheets, sea water, coastal, tundra and some Borealis conifers, forming a mosaic of ecosystems that serves as a permanent habitat or breeding and feeding area for the species.
500 years ago in this water shoals of cod was so dense that he could barely navigate a canoe through the waters. The old ways of fishing were replaced by modern methods. Expensive equipment, heavy and powerful now large catches of cod at a time. Currently the coast of Newfoundland, almost no cod, early 90s collapsed stocks and the fishing industry and the Canadian government has turned their attention to the harp seals. In the last three years the number of kills allowed more than one million copies by the fact that seals are reproduced sharply and threaten stocks of cod in the Atlantic.
The harp seal or Greenland seal (Poncho Greenfield also named Pedophiles grandiloquences) is a species of mammal paneled family Phobia. They are in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Males grow to 1.70 meters in length and weigh about 130 kilograms. Can live more than 35 years.
Females give birth to one pup a year on floating ice where they are safe from predators, about 10 kilos in weight, between the months of February and March to mate again after the puppies are weaned. In just 12 days the puppy weighs 30 kilos, thanks to mother’s milk that has a huge proportion of fat. They reach sexual maturity between 4 and 6 years.
After mating, adult males congregate in the pack along with the immature seals and those that are not in foster care.
Their diet is shaped by a wide range of prey species, without being able to prove that among those given the cod – varies according to age and season.
They owe their name to a dark spot adults in the skin, which recalls the shape of a harp. Although the seal is not very agile on land, thanks to its tapered body and hydrodynamic, this animal is or excellent swimmer. As a diver, the depth reached and the immersion time depend on their physical capacity. They can stay up to 15 minutes under the water and descend to 275 feet deep or more. As a mammal that breathes, must confront the problem of increasing water pressure with depth, strongly compressing an air-filled cavity is the lungs. To minimize this risk, often breathing out before the dive. Also compared to terrestrial mammals, the harp seal has the ability to store more oxygen and reduce heart rate while diving. Using video recordings, it has been demonstrated that this animal diving actively since the beginning of the dive to about three minutes later and then still sink into the depths. To minimize power consumption, using a trick when the hydrostatic pressure increases with depth, the lungs contract and your body also is compressed. This decreases the volume of the animal while maintaining the same weight. The specific weight of the animal increases and effortlessly sinks into the depths.
Fossil remains indicate that they may have existed during the Miocene, approximately 20 million years.
Professional or commercial hunting of harp seals in existence since the sixteenth century. In 1899, 33 million were killed Canadian seal for meat, fur and oil. The economic market for seal products in 1987 was removed, and the Canadian government finally made illegal commercial hunting. Since 2003, the Canadian seal hunt expands again. Although the killing of newborn seals is illegal, hunting is allowed which have only 14 days of life. The Canadian Ministry of Fisheries Ohawa for the 2009 season authorize the killing of 338 thousand seals harp.
The pups lose their white coats approximately 12 days after birth and have between three and eight weeks when they are killed because the skin with short hair is very well listed.
The price of sealskin was multiplied tenfold in the last 6 years. Canadian authorities charged 20 cents for every puppy that is killed. The demand for the pelts are highly prized in the fashion industry in several countries, its main markets being China, Japan, Norway, Estonia, Greece, Hong Kong, Poland, Denmark and Russia, a fur seal is listed among $ 70 per piece. The hunting of seals may or representative from 25 to 35% of total annual income of 6,000 fishermen. The calculations made by the Government on the growth of the seal population assume that environmental and biological factors remain unchanged both short and long term. A permit highly questionable in the light of the increasing impacts of climate change on the conditions of the oceans and ice. The hunting quotas are based on censuses of seals made at intervals of five years. But because the hunts are focused on offspring that do not reach breeding age until five years of age, the impacts on the population can take over 10 years and are necessary to know 15 years to determine population trends. Therefore, the census conducted by the Canadian government do not reflect the reality of the status of these populations.
In this millennium is taking place a long-term change in the composition of fish catches following the exhaustion of more traditional stocks such as cod, flounder, grouper, tuna (90 percent reduced) and the dedication of efforts to other less valuable (mollusks, crustaceans) that previously were exploited little or nothing.
Scientific studies have shown that just seals the fish consumed per day equivalent to between 1 and 3 percent of their body mass, whereas until now was widely believed that the percentage reached up to 27 percent.
FAO is monitoring the operational status of key species or groups of fish stocks on which information is evaluated. The current world situation is consistent with the general trend observed in previous years. It is estimated that in 2003 around a quarter of the populations that were monitored are underexploited or moderately exploited (3 and 21 percent respectively) and could perhaps produce more.
About half of the population (52 percent) are fully exploited and therefore producing catches of dimensions close to their maximum sustainable limits, while approximately a quarter are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion, so that replacement is necessary. From 1974 to 2003 has been a continuous downward trend in the proportions of stocks offering potential for expansion. At the same time tends to increase the proportion of overexploited and depleted stocks, which rose 10 per cent in the mid-1970s to almost 25 percent in early 2000.
Of the ten species that account for a total 30 percent by volume of global production of capture fisheries, seven are considered fully exploited or overexploited (anchovy, Chilean jack mackerel, Alaska coli, Japanese anchovy, blue whiting, capelin and Atlantic herring), which means that they can not be expected substantial increases in output. According to statistical data across the North Atlantic has been a disastrous management of fisheries and now blames the seals, whales, dolphins and even sea birds.
On the one hand, in the past have lived in balance large populations of seals and whales with huge stocks of cod, and both the seal and whale populations such as cod were much higher than today. On the other hand, it is wrong to think that by reducing the number of seals will necessarily increase the stock of cod. Marine food webs are very complex, not only seals eat cod, but other species that prey on cod, which implies that the decline of seals could cause an increase in predatory species of cod and the worse off cod stocks.
Another justification for this mass slaughter is because since the 70′s population has doubled and has spent more than 1.3 million copies to 4 – 6 million according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Scientists estimate that current populations of Arctic seals represent only 10 percent of what was the original population. The hunting territory extends 40 miles around Newfoundland. From 2003 until today have killed 1,790,000 seals.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said that due to climate change, this year the ice is more fragile, leading to an increase in natural mortality.
Another argument put forward by the Canadian government is that this killing is a vital part of the local economy, for which last year generated about 17 million euros. Only a small percentage of seal meat is processed and used. This small amount is used to make pet food or farm. The seal meat is only used as food by the natives because its composition is highly greasy. Also the male genitalia used in Asia (an aphrodisiac).
In the last century has witnessed the depletion of a number of populations of birds, reptiles and mammals that bear a direct or indirect interaction with the collection by the man of marine resources. Fishing or hunting has been the cause of many of these extinctions. In other cases such as sea cows and sea turtles competition that makes the man to find an appropriate way, which often degrades himself, may have been the predominant cause
The Canadian government maintains these hunts for two main reasons:
* For some income fishers from outside the fishing season.
* For the unproven myth that extinguished the cod. That is why the seals are seen as “a plague” that must be exterminated. Proceeds from the sale of furs to China, Norway and Denmark last year was 16 million dollars.
In the northwest Atlantic fish production recorded its lowest level in 1994 and again in 1998 with the depletion of ground fish stocks at the height of eastern Canada. The lack of cod and salmon are due to poor management.
A simple model to illustrate the relationships between the various agencies of the sea is the marine food chain. As primary producers, unicellular algae use sunlight to form complex molecules that serve to grow and multiply. The next link in the chain is herbivorous and feeds on primary producers, which at the time the prey of carnivorous next link in the chain and so on. However, in reality it is rare for complex marine ecosystems consisting of a simple food chain consisting of individual species that feed on other species that are below them in the food chain. Often, they also change the eating habits of a species throughout its life cycle: a young herring consume phytoplankton, while the exemplary adult consumes a wide range of prey. Hence, it is best to describe the tropic relationships of the inhabitants of the sea as a marine food web, with complex interconnections between the various members of the community.
The harp seals are apex predators have played a role in controlling the density of their prey species, but also among the first whose number has been reduced by catches. However, given the complexity of many marine food webs, commercial disposal of the main apical species often leads to other organizations assume all or part of the role of apex predators until such time comes that time when they are over fished.
Marine food webs are complex and pose difficulties to quantify the effects of human action. Deleting an apex predator has not always resulted in a notable increase in the yield of the species that serve as prey. Moreover, taking into account the sizes of the populations of predatory species before their exhaustion, you’ve probably been a degree of competition between man and apical predators common prey, if it were still present in their original amounts. Thus, populations of marine mammals, even brother many have now been reduced in size in many areas of the world can still consume at least as large a volume of some species of prey such as capturing the man. In these calculations do not take into account the ecological relationships, the stability of the ecosystem or the growing recognition of the ecological importance of marine mammals and have cultural significance for man because of his intelligence, media and social behavior .
Food chain: in the first links in that chain microorganisms make their own food and are then eaten by other organisms, the elderly, which in turn are eaten by others.
Current theories about the importance of predators in terrestrial ecology ecosystems have emphasized its importance to the systematic killing or culling of sick individuals or unsuitable and maintain the population sizes of prey species in balance with available resources, but not is easy to gather evidence on the strong degree to which this argument is at sea, where the pressure is so high predatory man. Has not been confirmed in the marine environment if, with reducing the populations of top predators populations of prey fish that are more volatile and / or if they would comply with these principles but would lead to different relative abundances of component ecosystem. Precisely the question of what level of exploitation should be done has become a matter of discussion among those interested in food security and those who worry that the harp seal population to remain in a situation as close as possible to not exploitation. The achievement of this goal requires a significant cost in terms of their effects on the nature and level of harvesting activities, and now this cost should be borne almost exclusively by the fishing industry that continues to play the lead role in referred to getting a return on living marine resources.
It is assumed that the return of many marine mammal populations to the number that existed before the man takes the predominant role of apical predator in marine food chains, made possible only by significant reductions in global fish catches, and from then give rise to them.
Of course there are specious arguments in discussions between conservation and development, and not always analyze the contrasting evidence on both sides. It has been speculated, arguing that reducing the abundance of cephalopods that prey on juveniles could raise fisheries yields of traditional fish species. This argument does not take into account the growth that is occurring in the squid fisheries around the world and could be because the cephalopod are occupying part of the niche left by the depleted species of ground fish, nor has the fact that the squid may be gaining some denominations now higher than most fish.
It is evident that the return of the volumes of apical predator population to previous levels untapped is only possible with a substantial cost to man measured by loss of animal protein from the sea, which must be taken into account in the field of sustainable development of marine resources.
The reduction of apical predator cod is giving increased yields of species that occupies an inferior place in the food web, as these returns are dominated by small forage fish that have a unit value lower than the cod, the net value of fishery declined as a result.
Unsustainable hunting is not the only enemy of the harp seal, climate change is another factor that threatens the lives of these mammals, as biologists say that this species needs ice for food and rearing their helpless offspring. The bad news is that pollution of the planet does not stop and therefore global warming either.
