Few people are aware of just how our marine heritage has come to be destroyed through human greed and over fishing and how forced removals and displacements, closely following the social engineering lines of our Apartheid past, disturbed the natural order of our marine life, causing the starvation of seals and sea birds alike and creating enmity where none existed..
Seven hundred years ago there was an estimated 20 million seals living on less than 46 barren islands along our coastline, 80% of these islands are found off the Cape/South African coast and 20% in
The largest of these islands was
Over millions of years, seals had evolved to play a most vital role in the eco-food chain off this coast. Their task was to remove the sick and the weak from migratory fish species that would mature far to the north, and then migrate south to spawn, before making the long journey back. This migratory fish selectivity ensured that the species they preyed upon remained healthy.
The islands, which were well placed geographically, would provide bountiful prey of the right size for the growing pups. The seal population was kept in check by a variety of factors, affording the alpha bulls and mating cows the opportunity to control their own population size, limited by the size of each island. The result of this unique relationship between seals, the size of their population, their islands and their prey, was a sea teaming with fish of many species and thus one of the most productive fisheries in the world - a fact soon discovered by man who systematically set about raping the environment in an unsustainable manner.
He started with the biggest, easiest and most visible, the whales. When depleted and no longer commercially viable, he moved on to the seals, the seabirds, their eggs and then, with regard to the offshore islands, the guano (bird droppings) scrapping them clean. His commercial mind then turned towards the seas where, in turn, he pillaged the surface shoaling fish, the big game deep water fish, the line fish, then the bottom dwelling fish and then even the sea-plants, his greed escalating commensurate with his profits.
Apart from ever increasing human consumption, this food chain was turned into dried and processed ‘fishmeal’ to be used in pet foods and live stock farming, despite seafood never having formed part of these land based animals’ natural diet. In fact, it is said that over 70% of the industry is dedicated to making ‘fish meal’.
In the wake of this rampant pillaging an entire echo system was destroyed and entire species were left in tatters. And the resultant cost to the environment carried an even greater one – a fresh water bill, allegedly far in excess of R 150 000 per month for washing fish at just one fish plant, instead of using freely available salt water. This is obscene in a country that is urged to conserve water as it is estimated that
But we digress.
Extensive sealing over the past few centuries saw all these offshore seal colonies collapse. By 1900 seals were virtually extinct. No longer hunted, they attempted to rebuild their destroyed colonies and fulfil their vital role. But their historic breeding habitats, their islands, were now denied to them.
One of the first consequences of this man-made imbalance in the natural environment was an unnatural growth and over population in the numbers of seabirds, due to less competition for space and prey and so they took over these former seal islands which had now become exploited for seabirds, their eggs and lucrative guano, by the human greed machine. So desperate were seals to re-colonize their offshore islands once again, that government was forced to build walls on 11 of the largest to keep them off permanently. With few available islands now situated in their historical, migratory fishing grounds, seals had few options and so, unnaturally, took to breeding on 16 small awash rocks, not suitable for their pups. The price the seals paid was high - almost all their newborn would be washed away.
Overcrowding became an issue and so around 1940 the seals were forced to begin breeding on the mainland for the first time, thus forever altering the evolutionary path of this species. By 1950, their numbers had sufficiently recovered to facilitate renewed interest in them, not because of their profitability in harvesting, but because of the concern they might in future pose to the now lucrative fishing industry, already feeling the effects of over fishing in the 1960's.
Because of dwindling numbers, the Cape Fur Seal became a protected species and up to 1990 the South African government, which at that time controlled both South Africa and Namibia, was involved in the administration of commercial harvesting of these creatures, this ‘harvesting’ being driven by the need for the manufacture of Scottish sporrans, a traditional export business. There was no other market for their skins. But the genitals of these hapless creatures are sought after for use as an aphrodisiac in eastern countries, already suffering a burgeoning over population.
In 1990, following a public outcry about the cruel clubbing to death of seals by untrained labour, the
Bizarrely, seals are today only found on 1% of the offshore island land mass with an unnatural domination on 99% of the off-shore islands by seabirds, the weaker lower species in the food-chain.
However, even in this bizarre situation, with probably the biggest mass mortality of top predators the world has ever seen, there is still hope. This hope comes in the form of the highest law in the land, the Constitution, which states: "the harvest of a natural resource (fish) has to be done in a sustainable manner."
By introducing seals back to one single island, as suggested by Francois Hugo of S.A. Seal Alert, we can alter the evolutionary path of seals back to what nature intended – but then we would have to harvest in a sustainable manner.
(See: How
