HALIFAX - A call by Nova Scotia's fisheries minister for an expansion of the province's annual grey seal hunt is being considered by federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn.
Ron Chisholm encouraged Ottawa last week to press the European Parliament to reject a proposed ban on the import of seal products and added that he had approached federal officials about the possibility of expanding the harvest of Nova Scotia's growing grey seal herd.
When asked whether the file was under active consideration, Hearn's office replied in an email: "The issue of the growth of the grey seal herd is widely recognized. We will continue to have discussions with minister Chisholm on the issue, but at this point no decisions have been made.''
The quota for Nova Scotia grey seal hunt stands at 12,000, which is small when compared with the harvest off Newfoundland's north coast where about 200,000 harp seals were taken last year. Hunters in Nova Scotia rarely take more than a few hundred annually.
But Chisholm maintains an expand hunt is necessary to help fishermen who are convinced the 300,000-strong grey seal herd is affecting the recovery of groundfish stocks.
He said fishermen want the quota increased to between 20,000 and 25,000 per year, which they believe would help level out the population over a period of time.
Don Bowen, a research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, said the argument being made for an expanded hunt in the province might not be backed up by scientific evidence.
"From a science point of view, we simply know that the current quota of 12,000 is sustainable and that a higher quota would also be sustainable. But that is not directed to addressing this issue of whether grey seals are retarding the recovery of cod,'' said Bowen.
Bowen, said the main source of food for the grey seal is the sand lance, a small forage fish that is eaten by "most things in the ocean.''
He said herring, mackerel and redfish are also eaten on a seasonal basis along with some groundfish such as cod, which makes up an estimated two per cent of the seal's diet.
"It's not so much as whether there's a link or not, the question is whether changing the abundance of seals has strong impact on the dynamics of these cod stocks ... we don't know the answer to that question,'' Bowen said.
The bulk of Nova Scotia's grey seal herd inhabits wind-swept Sable Island, but populations are also located in the Northumberland Strait and around Cape Breton as well as along portions of the province's eastern shore.
Sightings were rare as recently as the late 1940s, largely due to overhunting, but Bowen said the grey herd had since experienced exponential growth of about 12 to 13 per cent per year from the middle of the 1960s through the 1990s.
He said much of the most recent growth of the herd on Sable Island also coincided with a 90 per cent reduction in the size of the Scotian Shelf cod stock, indicating that cod "isn't an important item in the diet of grey seals.''
Meanwhile, the last two surveys of Sable Island indicate the herd's rate of growth has actually slowed to about seven per cent, something Bowen called "a big change.''
He said although scientists don't have any direct way of measuring the reasons for a drop-off, it's likely because the seals are having a harder time finding food.
Although there's no word on when Ottawa will make a decision on whether to expand the hunt, Bowen said scientists will present new estimates for sustainable harvest levels for grey seals at a national peer review meeting in Nanaimo, B.C., later this year.
