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