THE PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1987. Fur flies over seals

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 16

THE PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1987. Fur flies over seals

Perhaps it is the season for extravagance. The Greenpeace Organisation, annoyed by a Soviet research programme that took 5000 Antarctic seals last summer, has turned on the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accusing it of connivance and attempting to keep the whole affair secret. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Lange, has responded that New Zealand’s objection to the programme — about which it knew in November, last year, and which ended on February 28 — was conveyed to the Soviet Embassy in New Zealand in March and repeated in June; this was a warning that New Zealand ports will be closed to any Soviet ships heading to the Antarctic on “any form of sealing expedition” in future.

The threat inflates the importance of New Zealand port access to Soviet Antarctic expeditions; issuing it after the end of the programme (and repeating it in the depths of the Antarctic winter) was suitably diplomatic; and the wide sweep of its compass makes it unworkable and unrealistic; nonetheless, the point probably has been made that New Zealand is unhappy with the killing of such a large number of seals. The Soviet Union, however, is likely to be quite bemused by it all.

The Soviet Union has made no secret of the programme and has complied with its obligations under international agreements and conventions applying to the taking of seals in the Antarctic. In 1972, the Antarctic Treaty nations, which include New Zealand and the Soviet Union, drew up a Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals to protect seals from over-exploitation and from commercial hunting. The Soviet Union has ratified the convention, New Zealand has not. In fact, it was only after the Soviet Union and Belgium ratified the convention in February, 1978, and were the sixth and seventh of the treaty nations to do so, that the convention became effective.

New Zealand has not ratified the convention but, in line with the principles of the Marine Mammals Protection Act that is part of New Zealand law, seeks the implementation of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. This is a wider arrangement that seeks to protect Antarctic resources of fish, krill, and sea mammals as part of the entire ecosystem, rather than as individually exploitable species. Nonetheless, the convention on seals is in force and under it three of the six seal species of the Antarctic can be killed for scientific research, for museum specimens and similar, specified purposes, subject to catch limits, and provided that the other signatories are informed.

Last November, the Soviet Union notified the other signatories to the convention and the other Antarctic Treaty nations of its intention to take the seals "in accordance with the convention.” The Australians, who have not yet ratified the convention but who have proceeded to draft the necessary paperwork, asked for more information on the location, duration, and method of kill that would be used in the programme. They got a reply in December, though by then the programme was under way. The Soviet Union has undertaken, however, to provide the research results and information on what happened to all of the seals to the convention signatories by October 31.

So much of the programme is general

knowledge. Since New Zealand is not a signatory to the convention, there is no strict obligation on the Soviet Union to provide New Zealand with the research results though, as a courtesy between Antarctic Treaty nations, such an exchange might be expected. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, cannot pass on information it does not have itself; indeed the conservation organisations show every sign of knowing as much about the programme as the Ministry. It certainly is not a recent discovery for them: on May 15 this newspaper printed astory in which the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition urged a campaign to stop the Soviet programme. The conservation groups apparently view the killing of nearly 5000 seals as the thin end of a commercial wedge. Even in his objections to the kill, Mr Lange does not go this far. To a press conference yesterday Mr Lange said that the Soviet explanation that the seals has been taken for scientific purposes was "a tenable argument” and it appeared that there had been no commercial exploitation. In this, Mr Lange is almost certainly correct; in his contention that “4000 seals is a lot to take from the Antarctic environment” he is likely to get some argument, however. The Soviet Union already has supplied a breakdown of the number of seals killed. Of the total, 4018 were crabeater seals, 30 were Ross seals, two were elephant seals, and the. rest were sea leopards and Weddell seals. Under the convention to which most of the Antarctic Treaty nations subscribe, Ross seals and elephant seals, together with the fur seals, are almost completely protected. These were the prime commercial species before the seal fishery ended in 1964. The Soviet Union will be expected to explain how the Ross seals and elephant seals came to be included in the kill and whether the very tight restrictions that apply to the taking of these species were observed. Of the other species, the convention allows an annual total catch of 175,000 for crabeaters, 12,000 for leopard seals, and 5000 for Weddell seals. These limits were based on the seal populations at the time the convention came into effect and which have been increasing since then. Of the population for crabeater seals, estimated then as 30,000,000, a kill of 4018 is hardly decimation of the species.

Other countries with an interest in the Antarctic, its resources, and the preservation of its wildlife, will be interested to see the results of the Soviet research. Although the seal kill is not a danger to the species, it is still a large number. The crabeater seal population is a big consumer of krill, the mainstay of the Southern Ocean food chain, however, and remarkably little has been known of the species until the last 20 years. This largely was because the seal has little commercial value; it has hair, not fur, ahd ! comparatively little blubber for oil extraction./ Furthermore, the species mainly inhabits the . pack ice and fast ice which was out of the range of the -old, ■ -sealing fishery. Understanding more of this seal will help understanding of the complexities of the Antarctic food chain.?;

In spite of this, some may insist that the seals should be left alone by the Soviet Union and everyone else. Their argument would be the better if it were kept in perspective and if the activity were not endowed with a secrecy and an aura of mischief that it does not have.