Tag Archives: seal and sea lion populations
Raising the sealing: Central Newfoundland Conservative candidate promises to revive beleagured seal hunt
The incumbent Member of Parliament for Central Newfoundland is vowing to bring back the seal hunt in the province. In an announcement made via a social media video post from outside the closed seal processing plant in Fleur de Lys on the Baie Verte Peninsula, Conservative candidate Clifford Small said restoring the seal harvest would bring balance to the ocean ecosystem and protect harvesting jobs and a way of life that has fallen by the wayside in recent times. Small — who was first elected in 2021 to represent the riding formerly known as Coast of Bays-Central-Nortre Dame — alleged the Liberal government has been trying to end the harvest. For the last decade, he said, the Liberal government has refused to listen to workers in the fishing industry and to evidence that showed unchecked seal and sea lion populations were depleting fish stocks. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 10:14
Sea lions, seals might be hampering WA salmon recovery. What can be done?
State officials are now exploring whether to kill sea lions and seals in the Salish Sea and outer coast in a desperate effort to save salmon species from extinction. A new report commissioned by the state Legislature and completed by the Washington Academy of the Sciences says seals and sea lions are likely impeding salmon recovery, and the full impacts of predation on salmon may not be fully understood without lethal intervention. Three mammals specifically have skyrocketed. From 1975 to 2015, the harbor seal population in the Salish Sea exploded from about 6,000 to around 50,000. And California sea lions rose from 50,000 to somewhere around 300,000 on the West Coast of the U.S., according to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. Populations of Steller’s sea lions living around Washington, Oregon and California steadily rose from an estimated 15,000 in 1982 to more than 43,000 in 2019. >click to read< 09:14
