South Africa Shuts the Door on Namibia's Wasteful Illegal Seal Imports
Seal Alert-SA, Press Release, July 5, 2007
The pressure and international awareness is certainly increasing on Namibia to announce an end to its seal cull. The latest article by Stephanie Nolan of the Canadian newspaper GlobeandMail, is clearly damaging to Namibia's image internationally. See excellent article, "Seal Hunt Central - Try Namibia ?
www.theglobeandmail.com/story/LAC.20070703.SEALHUNT03/Africa
What is more Seal Alert-SA has been contacted by Africa -NBC Television for a business television report program, as well as BILD in Germany and the Economist in Namibia. In addition, a BoycottNamibia website will soon be launched.
South Africa
Shuts the Door
on
Namibia's Wasteful Illegal Seal Imports
unhygienic
disease infested blood soaked factory floors lead directly
to baby seal boilers for the manufacture of omega-3 health
capsules
Such is the wastefulness of Namibia's sealing industry,
that in the early 1990s, 63% of the weight of pups, and 75%
of the weight of bulls was dumped as waste. Although listed
a few years earlier as an endangered species in 1977 with
the Convention In Trade of Endangered Species (CITES). In
1974 for example some baby seal carcasses were sold for pet
food at 30 cents (SA rands) per kg. Fearing public
condemnation at this obscene waste of an endangered
wildlife species (recovering from near extinction),
Namibian Fisheries quickly introduced legislation into the
sealing regulations requiring sealers to utilize the whole
seal carcass.
Seal meat was turned into
livestock fodder and petfood. Baby seal pelts were salted
and exported to Europe. Bull seal genitals were exported to
the east and bull skins were sent to a tannery in South
Africa to be made into seal-shoes. Baby seal carcasses were
also boiled in fat pressure-cookers to make Omega-3 health
capsules. Sealers throughout the 1990s earned less than 8
SA rand for each baby seal skin and 12 SA rand
for the meat. Total annual income for the three-man
sealing industry was N$600 000 or USD $85 000.
In context, for example, just 17
tons of seaweed that naturally washes ashore and equally
harvested in Namibia, earned more than 38 000 baby seal
skins and 253 tons of seal meat. Namibia has exported
between 300 - 900 tons of seal meat fodder per annum.
With no fashion content to these black,
brown or grey baby seal skins and banned from
import into the US, Namibian sealers struggled to find
export markets. Resulting in numerous illegal and criminal
exports. For example 5000 skins were seized by the US
customs in 2002, in 2003, South Africa twice criminally
convicted an importer for the illegal imports of these seal
skins from Namibian sealers. Namibian officials simply
turned a blind-eye to these international transgressions
and the flouting of international law.
Ignoring the mass die-offs in 2000,
where 95% of the pups died and half the adult seal
population. Namibian sealers continued to market and export
Omega-3 seal-oil capsules, touting these as having health
benefits, ignoring in the process, that Doctors
Henton, Zapke and Basson, at the world renowned
Bacteriology Section, Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in
South Africa, in 1999, concluded that, "Streptococcus
phocae infections associated with starvation in Cape fur
seals at Cape Cross (sealing) colony
Namibia". Noting
world renounced expert on Streptococcus that this disease
increases substantially after the animal has died. various
strains of Streptococcus has killed people before.
Aware that Namibian sealers are
continuing to flout South African moratorium on sealing and
its ban on imports of seal products, via sending seal skins
illegally to a tannery for processing in South Africa, and
a further 900 tons of seal meat for use in the livestock
and petfood industries.
Seal Alert-SA has contacted CITES, the
following reply was received from John Seller/Cites
Anti-smuggling, Fraud and Organization Crime section,
"Whilst I await further information from Namibia, I have
been advised that the CITES authorities were not previously
aware of the seizures that you say occurred in South Africa
and the United States of America. Now that this has been
brought to their attention, they will look into the
matter".
Seal Alert-SA further contacted South
African authorities. We have just received the
following email (see below). In a meeting with Theresa
Akkers of Marine and Coastal Management assurances were
given that MCM would investigate these illegal imports.
Seal Alert-SA as well will mount its own undercover
surveillance operation to track the shipments from these
sealers into South Africa illegally.
The point here, is that Namibia's baby
seal culling three-man industry is back to its obscenely
wasteful disregard and harvest of these endangered seals,
for as these illegal imports will be halted in South
Africa, 63% of the weight of pups and 75% of the weight of
bulls, has no viable market and will therefore be discarded
once again, in violation of Namibia's own sealing
regulations.
From: "Mpho Tjiane"
MTjiane@deat.gov.za
Cc: "Magdel Boshoff"
MBoshoff@deat.gov.za; "Sonja
Meintjes" ,
Smeintjes@deat.gov.za ;
john.caldwell@unep-wcmc.or
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 3:40 PM
Subject: Cape fur Seal
As far as we know the Department has not issued any CITES
import permit in regards to the above mentioned
species hence no data has been recorded. I spoke to
Marine and Costal Management they also have not issued
any CITES import permits for this species.
I hope you find this in order.
Kind Regards
Mpho Tjiane
Department Of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Directorate: Compliance and Monitoring
Private Bag X447
Pretoria
0001
Tel.: 27 12 310-3221
Fax: 27 12 320-7026
E-mail
mtjiane@deat.gov.za
For the Seals
Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA
27-21-790 8774
*
. * . *
From: Seal Alert SA
Date:
July 4, 2007
Marine Scientists
Refute - Namibian's Minister Claimed Fishery Losses Through
Seal Predation
Seal Alert-SA
Press Release, July 4, 2007.
Things are really hotting up.
Public protests and posters up on the star-wall was the
start. Dutch and German import bans the beginning.
Excellent articles in The Star, News 24, The
Cape Times, German Media, The Namibian, Radio
702, The Mercury, and on Legal Brief. Weekend
Argus carried stories, as did an excellent article by
Eleanor Momberg of the Sunday Independent, with headlines
screaming, "Ravaged by starvation, Namibia's rapidly
shrinking population of Cape fur seals is accussed of
out-fishing the high-tech trawler fleets" with four massive
pics of sealers clubbing baby seals. More is coming,
including maybe CNN, and The Namibian just published
an excellent piece written by Adam Hartman, "Word Maths,
Doesn't Add Up - Animal Activists", please click on link to
read full story,
allafrica.com/stories.html. To
which the below answers all.
Marine
Scientists Refute
Namibian's
Minister Claimed Fishery Losses Through Seal
Predation
As
anger grows about the continuing baby seal cull in Namibia
in 2007 and disregard the Ministry has towards pleas
for a civilised-society,
frustrated
'Seal-Mom's' use cosmetic make-up to deface Namibian
Commission Walls in the dead of night
'Seal-Mom's'
hard at work outside the Namibian High Commission in South
Africa
Upon
announcing a continued 80 000 baby seal cull, starting July
1, 2007, rolling for next three
years. Information Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah
motivated this by stating, "The sharp increase of the seal
population is endangering the fishing industry because the
seals kill (not eat) around 900 000 tons of fish each
year".
Francois
Hugo of Seal Alert-SA replies, number 1) baby seals dont
eat fish they suckle milk from their mothers, 2) the seal
population has been in decline since 1993, 3) the mass
starvation of 95% of the pups and half the adult seals last
year implies they ate very little fish 4) Namibia's
doubling of fishing quotas over the last decade and a half,
from 300 000 tons to 600 000 tons, is the sole cause for
the current fishing industries endangerment, and
the threat to seals future survival.
The Seals alleged 900 000
ton consumption of fish annually (half of which is
non-commercial fish species), is simple that of a
computer model, that has no basis in a starving seals
reality.
It is Namibia's
doubled fishery capacity and landings since independence
that should be modelled.
In the latest
scientific published fish consumption model for Cape fur
seals (published in June 2006), a study carried out
over an 8-year period in the three seal culling
mainland colonies of Namibia, two South African marine
scientists and one Namibian scientist, who heads the Marine
Mammal section at the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries,
refute the Information Minister's seal consumption claims.
The conclusions of their
research states, "Although seals and fisheries utilize the
same commercial prey resources, this does not automatically
imply that there is competition between them. To determine
the extent to which competition exists between seals and
fisheries, additional information is required, such as fish
distribution and abundance, feeding effort, amount of fish
utilized and size classes utilized by seals and fisheries
in time and space, the response of fish to changes in
predation rate, the response of seals, fisheries and other
predators (snoek, hake, sharks, seabirds, whales and
dolphins) to changes in fish abundance, and the response of
the market to fish supply.
Unless all this information, which is usually difficult to
obtain, is available, competition between two resource
utilizers cannot be determined
effectively".
Although Namibian Ministry claims
to be "harvesting seals in line with the principles of
sustainable management under the Constitution, fully
supporting the international concept of eco-system approach
to fisheries management".
The three year rolling cull of 80
000 pups and 6000 bull seals per year, can hardly be
considered sustainable when considering that the 2006 mass
die-off equalled that of the 2000 mass die-off and the 1994
mass die-off of the seals, in which, 95% of the pups died
and over 300 000 adults (half the population of seals).
South Africa also fully subscribes
to an eco-system approach to fisheries management, has a
no-cull seal policy and has written into legislation
policies which aim to ensure sufficient availability of
food for seals and seabirds in the wild to sustain
populations (through legislation to ensure adequate
escapement of prey from commercial fisheries). The
result is our Cape fur seals have no starved to death in
mass and we equally harvest 550 000 fishery tons. Clearly
the several mass die-off's the seals have experienced since
Namibia doubled its capacity and fish landings, has
illustrated that Namibia has got eco-system approach
management upside-down.
The threat from over-exploited
commercial fisheries to seals is even greater than the
annual cull by the sealers. Natural pup mortality within
first year of life, has increased >from 25% to 62%. Now
30% of all pups born die with the first month of birth, and
a further 32% die, between the months of February and the
July start of the sealing season. In what can be called as
an environmental/overfishing cull. To this must be
added Namibia's cull of 80 000 pups and 6000 bulls. What is
more, the Commission on Sealing in 1990, found that just
one sector of the thirteen fishing sector, the trawling
sector, drowns up to 30 000 seals annually. Double this
fishery capacity, as Namibia has done over the last decade,
doubles the seal mortality annually. Then there is the
blind-eye approach to thousands of fishermen taking arms,
guns and explosives to sea to kill seals, or the thousands
of seals mutilated from entanglement in discarded fishing
gear each year.
The mortality amongst Cape fur
seals, just goes on and on, the highest recorded marine
mammal unnatural mortality in the world.
Namibia needs to understand
one thing, what they started (culling seals) we cannot
stop, but when economic and tourism boycotts start to take
hold. The damage will be permanent for both seals and
Namibians.
Support the call to end it now, as South
Africa did in 1990.
For the Seals
Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA
