In an overfished sea, the seals have begun to move towards the coasts to look for food. Here they encroach on people’s territory. From being nearly extinct in the early 1980s, to recovering, we are now licensed to hunt seals again.
In the Theme – Shoot the seal, we have collected reports from the seal count at Koster, interviews with decision makers and researchers and also a series of facts about the three different seals we have along the Swedish coast.
Since almost four years ago, we have license hunting on gray seals, since two years on harbor seals and protection hunts on ringed seals since several years ago. We hunt all three seal species along the Swedish coast and there are several reasons.
Researchers have now established that the harbor seals in the Kosterhavet area are becoming increasingly scarce. Last year, only half of the females gave birth to pups. This is according to research from the University of Gothenburg, following this year's seal count. – We were very surprised. These low numbers cannot be dismissed year after year, says Karin Hårding, professor of zoological ecology at the University of Gothenburg and the leader of the project.
We accompanied seal researchers from the University of Gothenburg, to Koster. In the archipelago on the Swedish west coast. Koster is one of the places where the harbor seals give birth, at the beginning of summer every year.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency decided this year that we should shoot 630 harbor seals, 1500 gray seals and 350 ringed seals. Some think that is far too few, others are worried that the seal population will fail again. We asked the scientists and got different answers.
Explore the dramatic journey of the Baltic Sea's seals from near extinction to recovery and the debates surrounding their resurgence.
Sweden, Finland, and Norway conduct hunting for seals as trophy hunting. In most other countries, hunting of large marine mammals has been prohibited. In the USA, they have even banned the import of fish from countries that kill marine mammals to protect their fishing industry. Sweden doesn't have much fish to export, so that import ban is unlikely to affect us significantly. However, we hunt a large marine mammal – and that is unique.
The fish are running out, the herring and the baltic herring are threatened and the cod is almost completely gone. When there is a competition for the little fish left, many people want to blame the seal. Both that it eats too much of "our" fish and that it destroys our fishing gear. But how is it really? Does the seal eat more than we do, and what does it actually eat? We asked some seal researchers.
When the seal population had collapsed around 1980 and was almost completely extinct, the authorities put an end to all hunting. Seal protection areas were established, and all three species found along our coasts were protected. At the same time, we received EU directives to reduce emissions of DDT and PCBs. It led to the recovery of all three seal tribes.
