Today@Dal

This week, an open letter signed by four Dalhousie marine scientists — Hal Whitehead, Sara Iverson, Boris Worm and Heike Lotze — has received extensive international coverage. Here is just one article from The Guardian (UK):

Canada's multimillion dollar proposal to cull grey seals will not bring back the ravaged stocks of Atlantic cod it is intended to help, scientists have said.

In October, the Canadian Senate approved a controversial plan to kill 70,000 grey seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence under a bounty system next year, ostensibly to revive the cod stocks that the seals were eating.

But a group of marine scientists at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have said in a recent open letter: "There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest a cull of grey seals in Atlantic Canada would help depleted fish stocks recover.

"Seals are being used as a scapegoat, just like whales were once blamed for fishery declines," said Hal Whitehead, marine biologist at Dalhousie, told the Guardian. He called the proposed cull an abuse of the science. "I don't like the idea of slaughtering all these animals for no reason."

...

The cull request was currently being reviewed, said a DFO spokeswoman. That seals are a factor in the lack of cod and groundfish recovery was "a logical conclusion given that an individual grey seals eat between 1 and 2 tonnes of fish every year", she told the Guardian.

But Sara Iverson, a researcher in physiological ecology at Dalhousie University, said cod madke up a very small part of the grey seal's diet. Iverson, who has studied their diets for 17 years, said they prefer fatty fish, while cod are lean with only 1% body fat.

There are all kinds of reasons why the cod have not bounced back, Whitehead said, adding that there has never been a complete ban with some local fisheries continuing, and there is a problem of bycatch.

Read the rest of this article at The Guardian online.