According to the NOAA website, the Hawaiian Monk Seal is one of the most endangered marine animals in the world. They are found only in Hawaii and have a population that has been on a steady decline since the 1950’s (about 4% per year.) Work has been done recently to being their numbers up. The NOAA has created programs to foster the seals’ numbers. The Hawaiian Monk Recovery Seal program was designed to respond to a wide range of threats throughout all the islands of Hawaii. Their strategies are to enhance survival of female seals as well as juvenile ones, ensure natural population growth and reduce human-seal interactions, prevent and lessen disease and build on seal health care capacity, and also to administer a recovery program for…
Otariidae or eared seals one of the three groups of pinnipeds and are more known as sea lions or fur seals. The eared seal is adapted to live a semi-aquatic lifestyle, meaning they feed and migrate through water then breed and live on land or ice. They live in subpolar, temperate, and equatorial waters throughout the Pacific and Southern Oceans as well as the southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans. They are absent in the northern Atlantic Ocean.…
The Caribbean Monk Seal was last seen in the early 1950’s but were officially extinct in 2008. It is known that their predators were sharks and humans. This is the first seal specie to go extinct due to human actions.…
“Bloody Ice” is an essay arguing against the mass slaughter of Harp Seals. The author reveals the legal limits for the amount of seals allowed to be killed each year as stated by the U.S. Seal Protection Act and pleads for the further reduction of those limits. The passage argues that the inevitable extinction of the animals and the inhumane methods by which they are killed are cause for severe regulations on seal hunting. In the conclusion of the paper, it is suggested that ranching the seals would reduce impact on seal population and cut down dependency on the seal industry. The essay starts off well, but generally lacks in persuasively arguing its point and is therefore ineffective as a whole.…
Looking at the chart shown in the results section, it is clear the most frequent behaviors are bark, yell, and yelp. The correlation between these three behaviors is that all of them are vocal behaviors. Beginning with the behavior of barking, barking is a very typical form of communication for seals and revolves around establishing and defending territory and mates (SOURCE). Harbor seals, usually males, will bark at other males in order to create territorial boundaries among themselves. These territorial boundaries are not created in order increase access to food because the diet of the harbor seal consists primarily of fish, which are located only in the water. This means that seals secure territories in order to secure mates. There is a competition between males to acquire mates and reproduce and it is for this reason that it's so important for males to be territorial.…
The people most impacted by these harmful effects are those living in the Arctic. These Arctic communities rely on an “informal, subsistence economy” where goods like clothes and food come from hunting and fishing. The retreat of sea ice and climate related changes in the Arctic marine ecosystem “bears implications for subsistence livelihoods” that the Arctic people rely on for both survival and prosperity. It is the responsibility of Canada to support these northern citizens by understanding the problems they face and to enact policy reflective of the Arctic Council’s…
Over fishing has led to an almost complete wipe out of the mature cod population in the area of Northern Europe. With lack of regulations, the world could witness an entire species of fish destroyed due to rational behavior of man to want more. This is a classic example of a “commons” which Garrett Hardin discusses in his essay “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968). The North Atlantic Cod is a natural resource that, although regulated minutely, is being overfished and exploited. Even though the fishing industry is an important industry that feeds many third world countries and provides income to most of those countries also, allowing the exploitation is unacceptable. Today’s society is not effectively reducing or efficiently stopping the damage that is being done to the populations and environment. In order to solve the problem of over fishing cod in the Northern Atlantic we must apply a combination of technical and ethical solutions. I would have the United Nations pass specific laws regulating major fish populations which could be an extension of the Third Committee: Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian or (SOCHUM) of the United Nations. I would also have specific incentives put up by SOCHUM to promote research into developing more widespread aquacultures and better fishing technology that better targets older species of fish.…
There are two perspectives on this topic, with it or against it. Harp seals are overcrowding and lowering the population of fish in the Canadian waters, this leads to unemployment in many fish industries. There is an animal chain that has to be balanced, by having too many seals they overpopulate and jump the chain, their meat is a great source of omega 3 and 6, their pelts are water resistant and in many cases do not cause allergies, so the hunting sounds pretty beneficial. It’s the most regulated hunt of its kind & the population is large enough to sustain the hunting. There are 9.5 million harp seals and the hunting of seal pups has reduced the global seal population by two-thirds, but there are many other different ways to fix the problem…
Imagine this, as one flies over the shores of Canada and looks down, all you see is red covering the ice beneath you. As your eyes follow the path of red a man is walking with a large stick and at the end of the stick is a dead, bloody seal. A seal the was once bathing in the sun, with its pelt as beautiful as never before, has now lost its chance at life. This act is known as seal clubbing. It takes place a few months out of the year and fisherman in the offseason commits it. This cruel act is legal in Canada, but in the eyes of many it should be illegal. There are many different organizations such as PETA, IFWA, and the human society, who are trying to save the baby seals and end the killing. Seal clubbing is a nasty act that is killing innocent creatures, in an inhumane way and it should be stop.…
In 1981, this release site in British Columbia was was converted into an ecological reserve, forbidding any human interference in the area and establishing a harvesting closure on many key prey of the sea otter. Thanks to these efforts, the Canadian population of the sea otter now numbers around three thousand(Sea Otters, 2013). Their population continues to grow by seventeen to twenty percent each year. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has allocated the sea otter endangered status and it now has legal protection under the Canada Fisheries Act. In British Columbia, it has been placed on the Red List, being legally given status under the Wildlife Act as an endangered…
Man's presence in the eco-system requires a "green" approach to the use of animals. The principle of the sustainable use of a natural, renewable resource meets this requirement ecologically, conservationally and morally” (TheSealFishery.com). I think the seal hunt is one of the world's best examples that refer to “green" approach to the use of a natural, renewable resource because seal hunting is a practice that is conducted safely as well as humanely. Seal hunt is widely practiced in countries across North Atlantic because it is a sustainable and beneficial source of income in those countries. The annual seal hunt is a “multi-million-dollar industry”, first because it offers job opportunities in the areas where there is no any other source…
Even though the Inuit population of Canada’s Far North is small, they still play a significant role in Arctic Sovereignty and must be defended in order to sustain their way of life. The Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Arctic Sovereignty is a document that that states the rights, responsibilities and roles that the Inuit have regarding Arctic Sovereignty. The first article in the declaration states that the Inuit living in the Arctic depend heavily upon the natural resources that obtain from the land and sea (Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Arctic Sovereignty). Since ocean travel in the Arctic is becoming much easier due to receding sea ice, other countries such as Russia, Denmark/Greenland and the United States (US) may being to exploit resources such as fish, that the Inuit rely on as a part of their culture and way of life. If Canada does not protect its Arctic Sovereignty, the Inuit’s resources may be exploited to a point in which their way of life is drastically altered. But this has already begun. They are no longer able to travel or hunt for as long…
"Federal Policy and Legislation." Government of Canada, Environment Canada. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. .…
When considering population, the policy makers compare Canada with other countries, many of which are grossly overpopulated and showing signs of severe ecological, social and political stress. (Address to the Humanist Assoc. Of Canada, 1995) It is usually decided that Canada has too few people, compared to these other countries. What are not considered however, are the carrying capacity of ecosystems in Canada and the long-term historical trend of the growth of human…
In 1994 governments attempted to bring up the failing fisheries when worldwide the fisheries spent $124 billion to catch the fish but, got $70 billion out of it so the governments covered up the shortfalls. Coral reefs are on the verge of collapse because of overfishing. Also the coral reefs have decreased from about 28 percent to 13.8 percent. About 19,300 square miles of coral reef has been lost due to overfishing. See humans and animals are being affected by commercial fishing and overfishing.Humans could find another food source other than fish and for the government to pass a law that commercial fishing should be changed the way it is done. Doing this will solve the problem by leaving the fish alone so they can repopulate and the fish population will be restored. By the government passing the law then, commercial fishers will have to choose a less damaging way to catch fish. They could use rods instead of a huge net so you will be able to quickly decide what you want to do with the fish instead of killing fish by bycatching. So to find another food source the government could tell people to hunt more common deer and…