Seals, Protest Profits, and Oil Exploration
Contribute to Fish Futures
There has already been a lot of noise from media in
this “Year of the Ocean” about the terrible problems with some
declining fish stocks. In most cases, the print article or video treatment
identifies human “overfishing” as the cause of all these troubles. One
might ask why we tend to believe all these disasters are our fault. Others
point out that perhaps it doesn’t matter “who” is to blame, because
the most important task right now is to correct, if possible, a
deteriorating situation.
Because this is extremely
important from the perspective of future global food security, it is
worthwhile to examine a number of complex problems that all have bearing on
the supplies of fish and other seafood as parts of inter-related biomass,
all affected by changes in climate and physical surroundings.
First of all, the sea
environment is not a static phenomenon. It is constantly changing, although
most people are not aware of the complexity of this process. Human seismic
testing for oil reserves has been, in some instances, extremely damaging to
the environment. Not all such testing has been bad; some has been done with
compressed air, and has not been more than a temporary disturbance. In
other instances, it has been done using high explosives, and the seabed has
been blasted apart for miles around each test site. The result has been
unusual turbidity, changing the amount of light penetrating the depths,
with resultant temperature lowering. This has affected everything from the
floor up, damaging spawning, fry mortality, zooplankton cycles, and whole
age classes of fish of all trophic levels. Naturally, when this occurred
off eastern Canada, neither Canada nor the U.S. volunteered to discuss it.
The oil exploration was deemed vital to the national security of each, and
for some ten years, the area was tested and evaluated for oil reserves.
This activity, with the potential for causing the greatest fish decline in
history, has not once been mentioned by any mainstream media as a possible
contributor to noticeable fish stock problems.
The reason was that
mainstream media had no clue that oil exploration had any bearing on fish
stocks off the Grand Banks. They did, however, receive a lot of information
about fish declines not being attributable to the vast numbers of harp
seals. Unharvested since 1983, harp populations grew from 1.8 million then
to something over 6 million animals in 1997. Canada’s beleaguered
Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans had from time to time, put some blame for
declines on the fact that seals, unharvested, were devouring the fish. Not
So! hooted the protest organizations, such as the International Fund for
Animal Welfare, Greenpeace, and others. They made headlines claiming Canada’s
government was to blame, not the seals, for neither controlling her own
fishermen, nor those of other nations who plundered Canada’s EEZ until
the fish were decimated.
Obviously, however, since
seals eat only fish and other seafood, they had to have been having some
impact, while they grew at such a devastating rate. They may be only now,
feeling the effects of their own terrible increase, with dwindling fish
supplies just beginning to cause suffering among them, as they crowd
together in great numbers, and stress each other in constant bullying
patterns over space and food.
The reason that media
seemingly ignored seismic testing as a factor, and began to dwell on “overfishing”
by people may be easily explained by the fact that IFAW and other protest
groups, not wanting to take any blame for the situation (for they had “saved”
the seals) pointed media writers and producers towards government as a goat
in the matter, and sure enough, government began to finally accept some of
the blame, and admitted that quotas had been too high, and enforcement of
foreign fleets had not always been adequate. Obviously, neither the
Canadian nor the U.S. government would ever point to their own possible
complicity in the oil exploration factor, and tell media to lay off the
attack on inadequate management of the fishing effort. Perhaps the fishing
industry was knowingly sacrificed for the sake of finding oil, and both
nations should shoulder responsibility for the environmental result.
To be fair, since this
situation had never happened before, it is equally likely that neither
Canada nor the U.S. knew that their oil quest would have the environmental
impact that it did. Canada’s “failure” to adjust quotas for her own
and foreign fleets, may well have been lack of understanding of the damage
that was going on, and so did not drop quotas down to compensate. Or,
perhaps there was immediate knowledge of a problem, but to drop quotas
would have been to admit it, and then perhaps, to be forced by public
outcry to stop testing--not a politically viable option, given the crisis
before and during the Gulf War. What’s a worried nation to do?
Today, media are still
dwelling on exactly what protest movement groups are giving them; fish are
in danger, people are to blame, and seals are innocent. Those who feel a
genuine responsibility to begin “fixing” this and other situations of
fish stocks decline, need to explore all possible causes, whether
industrial, meteorological, social, or economic, before taking action.
Poorly thought out or politically conceived actions may, at best, be
inadequate, and at worst, add to the overall problem.
Corrective measures off the
eastern coast of North America will probably take a very long time. The
responsibility to learn what is appropriate and the will to implement the
most effective remedial action, needs to be shared among governments and
their scientists. Marine mammals must not be left out of the equation. They
must be controlled effectively through renewed access to markets in the
U.S. and in the E.U.
Seals in particular must be
fully utilized, not only to control its numbers for its own sake, but for
human benefit, and to help regain a semblance of order among seals, fish,
whales, birds, and people. The control of seals will help in bring back the
fish.
Humans have had a significant
impact on the environment of the Atlantic. They have harvested fish in
ignorance of their numbers and of the conditions which affect them, and
they have neglected to harvest seals because of cultural preferences
unrelated to biological realities. The fish may return, if people can
manage to accept biological facts, and give them a higher priority than the
false values touted by self-serving protest groups such as IFAW and
Greenpeace. 
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