QUEST FOR SEALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26199, 9 July 1946, Page 6

QUEST FOR SEALS

UNINFORMED EXPERIMENT NO SCIENTIFIC APPROACH DR R. A. FALLA'S CRITICISM (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, July 8. A scientific investigation of New Zealand’s fur seal breeding rookeriefe and detailed information about the marketing of skins are needed if the Government hopes to revive the sealing industry in the future, said Dr R. A. Falla, director of the Canterbury Museum, who has studied seal life in the Antarctic and in several sub-Ant-arctic islands.

Dr Falla to-day described the proclamation of an open season for fur seals this year as an unenlightened experiment which was indefensible on scientific grounds. He said that the first open season in 22 years had been proclaimed because fur seals had increased to such an extent in that period that fishermen working in Foveaux Strait and at Stewart Island considered them a menace to the fishing industry. Successive Governments could have assessed the seal situation progressively in the last 22 years and more, but it was a humiliating fact that such a serious piece of legislation as the new seal fishery regulations had to be based on the opinions of fishermen who had been waiting hopefully for an open season.

Indiscriminate Killing

Dr Falla said that the Marine Department intended to carry out a scientific investigation during the open ■ season, but that should have been done long before. “ Our record here is a sorry one,” he said, after describing the North Pacific fur seal industry’s flourishing position, which was the result of biological investigation and the scientific supervision of the United States Government. Since the boom days, sealing had been revived here either for a short, open season or there had been active poaching whenever the seals had shown signs of increasing No serious investigation had ever been undertaken, and there had been no real change in the method of indiscriminate killing. “Incredible as it must seem to informed people abroad, the 1946 regulations nowhere prohibit the killing of cows, yearlings and the old bulls which are the mainstay of the breeding rookeries,” Dr Falla said. "The inference is that they may be killed to ensure the desired reduction.” Dr Falla said that the views of practical men that increasing seals were depleting the stocks of food fishes, mainly blue cod, must be respected, but they should be tested. When New Zealand’s fur seals numbered thousands for every hundred to-day, the cod managed to survive. If the present seal population was able to deplete the blue cod, there must be some more serious factor operating as well, and the reduction of seals could not do more than give temporary local relief.

“The extent of the increase in the seal population has' been vaguely stated, and has- been assumed to. be general,” Dr Falla said. “ The last two open seasons were announced in the same optimistic way. but it did not take very long to reduce the seals to an unprofitable remnant. According to our admittedly incomplete records, there has been no marked recovery in any of the outlying islands in the closed areas which are assumed to be great natural sanctuaries.” Marketing Difficulties

Dr Falla said that there was no official information about the market for skins, and the economic advisers were going to have some headaches unless they were already hardened to unprofitable undertakings. Prices were disappointing and unprofitable in the 1915 and 1924 open seasons, and the return from confiscated poached skins about 12 years ago was even worse. Prices now depended on a specialised and exacting market, the standard being a three-year-old bull skin cut and treated to a standard specification.

“ Supposing that our sealers are now instructed on paper how to do it, they are still going to bring back all ages and sizes of both sexes,” Dr Falla said. “Then comes the marketing.' Is the Customs Department to pay each sealer a guaranteed price, and the Government then to assume the risk? It seems hardly worth it.”