Subject: Namibian 'Baby' Seal Killers are Responsible for the Mass Starvation
Date: December 21, 2006
Press Release
Seal Alert-SA - 21st December 2006
Namibian 'baby' Seal Commercial
Killers are Responsible for the Mass
Washing
Ashore and Mass Mortalities of Starvation of
Seals
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert-SA leading the international outcry
amongst animal rights groups calling on Namibia to end its
genocidal baby pup sealing policy, responds to the recently
released findings of Dr Moses Maurihungirie, Director of Resource
Management in the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries into the causes of
the 2006 mass mortality and starvation of seals that are
'littering' the beaches in their tens of thousands.
See media releases : The Namibian
and the New Era
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612180925.html and
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612181417.html
The Ministry's autopsies on an
single adult female seal and a pup (showing that all their body-fat
reserves were depleted), reveal little into what has caused
hundreds of thousands of seals (mostly pups) to suddenly become
abandoned and slowly starve to death and/or females to abort, just
two months into Namibia's largest seal cull on record.
Seals don't give birth and
become re-impregnated in December, and then suddenly starting dying
in mass from starvation 9 months later (annually) - without
some more physical and environmental cause.
Seal Alert-SA disputes the
Ministry's claims that 'lack of sufficient fish and a scarcity of
pilchards' are the main cause for the mass death. Research done by
Dr Jeremy David of Marine and Coastal Management (South Africa)
found that 52% of seals diet consists on non-commercial bearded
goby, 23% horse Mackerel, 5% Snoek, and less than 20% is made up of
a whole range of species like Anchovy, Hake, Squid, Crayfish, Crab,
Shrimps and Prawns. Pilchards, although plentiful (where in
1968 1.5 million tons was commercially harvested) has not recovered
since the 1994 collapse from overfishing, and therefore cannot be a
major contributing factor, 12 years later into these regularly mass
mortalities particularly half-way into sealing season
suddenly.
Since 1990 when Namibia started its
intensive seal culling season (July to November), regular and
annual mass washing ashore and mass starvation has immediately
preceded the seal cull event. This has been recorded since 1988.
This is one of the reasons Namibia's sealing policy is not
sustainable and is in violation of both South Africa and Namibia's
constitutions.
The death by starvation of these
seals, is the direct result of the daily disturbance inflicted upon
these seals by these 'barbaric' club welding sealers.
Just prior to the start of the 2006,
recently lengthened baby seal pup sealing season which started on
July 1, the Ministry announced that the seal population had
recovered from a previous mass die-off incident recorded in 1994.
Where half the population of seals equally
reportedly starved to death during its annual sealing
season, which runs everyday from 5am to 10am, from July to
November. In fact, several such publicly reported mass
die-off's during sealing season have been recorded 1988, 1994,
1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2004 and now again in 2006.
The Ministry reported that just
prior to the start of the 2006 sealing season that the Seal
stock was healthy and that the seal population, of which 75%
occurs within the two sealing concession areas of Wolf/Atlas Bay
and Cape Cross, could sustainably support the largest nursing baby
seal cull on record of 85 000. Yet, just two months into the
seal cull (again), the three Namibian sealing concession holders
report that they had to bury upto 900 pups a day and that they
could find no more pups to club to death on the colonies.
Immediately thereafter, the public started reporting the mass
strandings of seals away from the sealing colonies, where mass
mortality and starvation became widespread both in the north and
south of the sealing colonies. South Africa was equally
flooded with weanling seal pups fleeing the sealers. Likewise
escaping seals fled north and even into Angola.
Unlike the Harp Seals of Canada (another sealing
country) whose baby pups are weaned after three weeks from birth.
Cape fur seals, a completely different species, nurse and wean
their pups for upto 12 months and dry-land. Pup to cow bonds are
much deeper, more dependent and more emotional. As far back as
1987, these Harp seal species sealing countries (Canada, Greenland,
Russia and Norway), all acknowledged, and banned the practice of
clubbing nursing baby seals in nursing and breeding grounds.
.
This is in fact the cause, of the reported mass
starvation and mortality being reported two months into sealing
season, and with good reason. Conservationally and ethnically it is
an unsound practice to allow an annual commercial sealing industry
to go into seal nursing and breeding grounds, where baby seal are
still nursing, and begin an annual clubbing cull of these
seals.
It will cause seals to flee. Pups separate
>from nursing cows, starve and then perish. Traumatised cows in
turn abort or abandon the new-born.
It is for these reasons the USA has banned the
import of Cape Fur baby seal skins since 1977, and the EU banned
the imports in 1983. Namibia remains the only country in the world
to slaughter nursing baby seals in birthing and breeding
grounds.
The Ministry's attempt to use the collapse of
Pilchards as the cause for widespread starvation and mass
mortality, when well aware of the conservational 'no-no' of
slaughtering baby seals - is tantamount to public fraud.
The Ministry further in its desire to 'cheat'
the Namibian public and international tourists - has made some
serious blunders this past year. First it admitted pups were only
growing at 10% of their normal growth rate and secondly that the
mass starvation was widespread, and thirdly that there have been
annual mass die-off's involving one third to one half of the entire
seal population, and finally - Sealers themselves have never been
unable to fulfil the 'sustainably' set baby seal pup quotas by the
Ministry.
What all this clearly adds up to, is that
Namibia is not harvesting seals sustainably, its intention is their
destruction, to conceal their own mismanaged fishing policies. No
longer is the Ministry civilised, its now using 'voiceless' seals
to conceal their own mismanagement of fisheries.
As the Namibian Ministry has chosen not to
officially announce an end to its sealing policy, like South Africa
did in 1990, it should brace itself for economic and tourism
boycotts of all its major industries. Already over 13 million
international citizens have voiced their opposition to Namibia's
baby seal cull policy. 2007, will see that number grow larger and
more intense. Germany which will head the European Union in 2007,
has confirmed all seal products are now banned from import into
their country.
Namibia announce an end to your sealing policy,
or face the consequences.
For the Seals
Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA
27-21-790 8774