BC Sealing Poll

[cohochinook]

Yes exactly, there is definitely some sort of connection with global B.C. and the Vancouver aquarium. Seems like every other week global runs a story about some seal the aquarium and ubc have rescued.

The Aquarium is essentially locked in hand with the David Suzuki Foundation. Global seems to be lock in step with them!​

 

[IronNoggin]

Luckly they sink so who care about a market. It enhances the feed for crabs. This should not be about a market, nor should demand dictate the volume taken. It's a cull.

No, it is not a cull, and all those involved with this matter agree on that point.
In fact, all also agree that they are firmly opposed to a "cull".
Rather it is an emerging fishery, aka a harvest with some rather excellent fringe benefits.

The meetings yesterday went about as I figured they would. In fact a little more amicable than I thought they would be.
Some progress was made identifying a few areas that require a little more refining on both sides of the equation.
Those have now been identified, and steps are being taken by both parties to address them in a timely manner.

I realize many here (and elsewhere) have outstanding questions.
As you might imagine, I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but I will get to addressing those I can soon, in a dedicated thread to that task.

Cheers,
Nog

 

[california]

Not necessarily it's possible that they kill enough that the Transit Whale population puts the seal population into a death spiral down.

Good point. I guess none of us really knows, including the scientists, what the effect would be unless an experiment was done removing some proportion of the seals. If you had a one time 20% cull maybe the predation from the tansients would keep the population stable at that rate , or decrease it. At some point an equilibrium would be achieved between predation effort and seal reproduction rates. It does seem to be in equilibriun now as seal populations in the Salish sea have been stable for 20 years or so, one would have to assume due to the cumulative effects of food availability, predation, disease etc. It is worth noting that salmon returns were pretty good in the mid 1990s with similar seal populations to what we have now.

 

[IronNoggin]

California - for the purposes of this subject, I have taken you off my ignore list.
I will address the majority of your concerns over the following days.

At this point, I would like to suggest that those without the complete set of related information in front of them, slow down on fueling speculative narratives.

Cheers & Thanks,
Nog

 

[wayne marwood]

One thing I can say when we had commercial fishing the seals were under control they did what they had to do in the day.