March belongs to seals.
During this month, different animal protection agencies proposed and set up different festivals related to seal protection.
March 15th is the International Day of Action for the Seals, March 22nd is the most widely recognized International Seal Day, and in China, March 1st is the International Seal Day recognized by domestic environmental protection groups.
In English, the word "seal" includes not only the true seal, earless seal) without external ear, but also the eared seal such as sea lion and fur seal with external ear.
Therefore, the word sealing not only refers to hunting seals, but also includes hunting other types of flippers, even walruses.
However, since we are telling stories on the International Seal Day in China, today, let’s just talk about seals.
The story of the seal
Tromso is a famous port city in northern Norway, which is called "the entrance to the Arctic Ocean".
Tromso in history is the place where the brave set out. In the past, whalers, seal hunters and polar explorers all chose to set off from here and go to the icy Arctic Ocean to realize their grand blueprint.
Hunting whales and seals is still a cool job for traditional Norwegians. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. The historical environment gave birth to hunting behavior-at that time, successful hunting meant rewarding yourself, comforting your family and improving your social status and relationship.
▲ It is not easy to hunt seals in the sea. Source/Wikipedia
Unlike whaling ships sailing in the open sea, seal hunters need to look for seals in the floating ice, which also means that their ships are in danger of being frozen by floating.
When the seals are dragged onto the ship, they may also encounter all kinds of accidents-ice floes are broken, polar bears are raided … Every time they return home in triumph, they bring back the gains they have gained with risks.
Nowadays, the hunting action of seal hunters is more restricted-whether it is the hunting object, hunting means or hunting quantity, strict regulations must be followed. Their every move has also attracted the attention of animal protection groups all over the world.
The hunting tradition of seals
The thick fat on marine mammals can help them resist the low temperature marine environment, and there are extra soft fur on seals, sea lions and seals, which also brings them fatal disasters.
Different from whales that live in the ocean all their lives, they breed on ice floes and congregate along the coast. In addition, most seals are slower and less aggressive than sea lions and seals after leaving the sea, which makes them easy to be hunted by human beings.
Indigenous people in the Arctic Circle, such as the Inuit, have continued their traditional life of hunting sea animals from generation to generation.
The first successful hunting of seals or reindeer is like a rite of passage for Inuit boys.
▲ Inuit people turn the seal skin over and inflate it as a floating raft. Source/Wikipedia
Seals provide the Inuit with necessities such as clothing, food, shelter and transportation. For these aborigines, hunting seals is not only a livelihood, but also a family culture inheritance.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, small-scale commercial seal hunting became popular. Since the rise of the industrial revolution, everything has changed.
The social productivity of human beings has improved by a great leap forward, and the emergence of steamboats has become the origin of commercial hunting. Gray seals, harp seals, crested seals, northern elephant seals … Many seal species in the northern hemisphere have suffered fatal blows, and seals in the southern hemisphere have not been spared.
▲ Description of the hunting scene of seals in Newfoundland, Canada in 1883 Source/book "Newfoundland, The Oldest British Colony"
In 1776, several British businessmen and ship owners jointly launched the first commercial hunting expedition to the South Atlantic, and the tragic fate of sea animals in the South Atlantic began.
South Georgia has become the base of sea animal hunters, where Europeans build slaughter and processing factories for seals, fur seals and whales.
Sea animals in the South Atlantic have never been hunted on such a large scale before. Abundant resources make hunters give up thinking. They squander their resources, do rough processing without stint, and then kill new animals.
The European aristocrats in the northern hemisphere are enjoying the products stripped and processed from these sea animals, such as soap, cosmetics, candles, lubricants, as well as agricultural feed and fertilizer.
The evil consequences of overfishing seals
Although some seals have enough bases to support large-scale commercial development, by the end of the 19th century, the population of these seals still declined sharply.
The northern elephant seal was once considered extinct, and many seal resources in the southern hemisphere were almost exhausted. Even in the 20th century, the hunting of seals has not been well controlled.
In fact, the over-exploitation of sea animal resources by human beings in the past has led to the extinction of three sea animal species: the sea cow, the Atlantic gray whale and the Caribbean monk seal.
The Caribbean monk seal is the only seal that lives in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. They are gentle and slow-moving, and they are not wary of human beings.
▲ Photographed in the Caribbean monk seal in the new york Aquarium in 1910, this species left us only black and white photos/Wikipedia.
After the habitat of monk seals was colonized, the habitat of these seals was seriously damaged and the seals were hunted in large numbers.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the witness rate of Caribbean monk seals has dropped sharply. The last sighting of this species was in 1952. After that, the Caribbean monk seal faded out of human sight.
In 2008, after five years of investigation and search, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service jointly announced the extinction of the Caribbean monk seal.
The extinction of Caribbean monk seals is directly caused by human activities, including the excessive demand of seal hunters for Caribbean monk seal resources in the 18th and 19th centuries and the overfishing of fishery resources in Caribbean coral reefs.
The brutal killing of seals that attracted attention
With the development of civilized society, the public has a clearer understanding of the commercial hunting of seals. The reason why the public can’t recognize the commercial hunting of seals is largely due to the fact that people can’t accept the cruel methods used in hunting seals.
Some unscrupulous seal hunters don’t care about seals’ feelings when hunting them. Sometimes they just knock them out and skin them alive, which may cause seals to suffer severe pain after waking up.
Seal cubs are not good at swimming, and their hair is not waterproof. Generally, they only stay on ice or land, so they are easier to catch.
In addition, the cubs of some species (such as harp seals) have pure white fur as snow, which can bring higher profits to hunters, so some hunters even put the baby seals to death and peel them directly in front of the mother seals.
▲ Canadian seal hunters are hunting seal cubs, and the hook at the end of the stick can hook the seal corpse and drag it back to the ship. Source/IFAW
Nowadays, the seal products that are commercially hunted are more bloody and cruel to the public, and many people are ashamed to wear seal fur.
In May, 2009, the European Parliament passed a legislative bill to ban the trading of seal products in the EU market, so as to ensure that the seal products obtained by commercial hunting no longer appear in the EU trade market. This is a powerful measure against the commercial killing of seals at the government level.
Despite this, there are still 8 countries and regions in the world that are currently engaged in commercial sea animal hunting activities.
These include Canada, Greenland (Denmark), Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Namibia in Africa. Canada has always been the center of controversy because it has hosted the largest seal hunting operation in the world.
▲ Canadian seal hunters stepped off the hunting boat and pounced on seals. Source/Wikipedia
For these countries that are still hunting seals commercially, they always have reasonable and justified reasons to continue hunting seals, such as:
At present, they hunt a large number of existing seals (such as harp seals and gray seals), which are not endangered species. Proper hunting of seals can even effectively control the number of seals and prevent seals from competing with humans for habitat.
Fishery resources, such as cod production in Arctic waters, have been declining year after year, and excessive seals will compete with humans for fishery resources, and even some seals will bite the fishing nets, causing fishermen’s property losses.
▲ Pot map used to cook seals and seal oil at the South Georgia Whaling Station/author of this article, Meow Fish Sauce
Let’s not talk about whether these reasons are completely tenable for the time being. At least now, the governments of these countries have obvious control measures for seal hunting activities in their own countries.
According to the statistics of IUCN’s Red List in 2015 and 2016, the populations of harp seals and grey seals in the Arctic sea area are currently on the rise.
As for the southern elephant seals and Antarctic fur seals in the southern hemisphere, they have been completely protected. Now South Georgia has recovered its vitality before the era of commercial hunting. What humans left there are only abandoned whaling huts and oil pans, which have become cultural heritage for tourists to watch.
Future challenges of protecting seals
Will the surviving and protected seals be able to continue their populations successfully in the future? The fact is not so optimistic, because these seals will face more human activities.
Take the two remaining species of monk seals as an example. At present, the challenges they face mainly come from habitat destruction caused by human activities.
Before the 20th century, Mediterranean monk seals would gather and breed on the beach. However, due to beach development and crowd sightseeing, many shy Mediterranean monk seals chose to hide in seaside caves to give birth, which reduced the survival rate of their cubs.
Reduced population distribution means less communication between different populations, and each population is isolated to a higher degree. In case of sudden disaster changes, the whole population may be wiped out.
▲ Mediterranean monk seals hide in caves to avoid human interference. Source/Wikipedia
At present, the number of Hawaiian monk seals in the world is only around 1000, while the number of Mediterranean monk seals is less than 500. Thanks to the local attention and appeal, the number of monk seals in the Mediterranean has been restored to a certain extent.
For seals that live in the Arctic sea area and rely on ice floes to give birth and raise their young, at present, their impact mainly comes from global climate change.
In the Norwegian documentary "The Hunter in the Ice Sea: The Last Hunting", Bjorn, the captain of the seal hunting ship, expressed his confusion about the future.
▲ Harp seal mother gets along with the baby on the ice Source/seals-world.com
This is not only because their behavior of hunting seals is restricted by more laws and public opinions, but also in recent years, they have noticed the change of sea ice-the thinning and reduction of ice floes caused by global climate change are not only conducive to the breeding of seals on the floes, but also to the hunting of seals by seal hunters on the floes.
"In the past hunting areas, we could probably see 50,000 to 70,000 seals, but now they are all gone."
Normally, seals only give birth to one baby every year, and the survival rate of cubs is lower than that of adult individuals.
Considering these life-history characteristics and the current threats faced by seals, in the next decade, we may witness that some vulnerable seal populations will be reduced by human activities, including but not limited to coastal development, seawater pollution (such as oil spill), plastic waste entanglement, climate change, etc.
In addition, the use of wild seals for captive display has also brought harm to the seal population.
In China, the emerging aquarium industry has spawned a series of demands for wild marine animals.
In February 2019, Dalian police seized a case of spotted seal poaching, and the live video shocked many netizens. 100 white spotted seal cubs were kept in a closed and dark environment, and the baby-like cry made people tremble.
▲ The Dalian police released by the traffic police in Changchun, Weibo, seized a video related to a spotted seal poaching case.
These spotted seals were stolen from the spotted seal nature reserve in China. Yes, there are naturally distributed seals in China, and only spotted seals come to visit regularly.
In January and February every year, spotted seals will come to Liaodong Bay to breed and raise young, and theft also occurs at this time. Stolen spotted seal cubs will be sold to the aquarium for captive display.
Many seal cubs died before being sold because of their inability to be independent, poor immunity and frightened stress.
What can we do to protect seals?
We don’t know how long the commercial hunting of seals will last.
Has some of the recovering seal populations seriously damaged the human fishing industry, or is this just an excuse for some countries to keep hunting seals?
Whether simply out of sympathy for such lovely and docile animals as seals or out of respect for wild animals, what we can do is to change the deformed fur aesthetics and resist the meaningless consumption of seal resources.
I wonder if there are people around you who blindly worship seal oil?
▲ We feel that it is everyone’s responsibility to protect wild animals and seals.
Perhaps seal oil really has a certain health care effect. However, the statement in the advertisement that "Arctic aborigines get rich nutrition because of eating seal oil and seal meat, and avoid suffering from’ civilized diseases’ of modern people" has taken into account the healthy living habits of these aborigines, such as doing a lot of outdoor activities on weekdays?
It is the most basic way to protect these animals as much as we can to resist illegal seal hunting and oppose wild seal hunting in captivity for entertainment.
After all, in the future, they will have to face more influences brought by the activities of the whole human group.
finally
Protect every wild animal,
It is our human obligation!
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The article was written by the invited author "One Dog, One Word".
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essay| Meow Fish Sauce/Consultant of China Whale Conservation Alliance
Edit | Ageha
References：
[1] Berta A, Sumich J L, Kovacs K M. Marine mammals: evolutionary biology. Elsevier, 2005.
[2] https://www.iucnredlist.org/
[3] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/
[5] https://ec.europa.eu/environment/biodiversity/animal_welfare/seals/seal_hunting.htm
[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20090223222149/http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/myth_e.htm
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