Posted on 01/17/2011 10:50:11 AM PST by The Comedian
People on the north coast of Labrador say scores of dead seals have been washing ashore since early December.
A conservation officer with the area's Inuit government estimated late last week that hundreds of adult and young seals have died in the area between Hopedale and Makkovik this winter.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is testing the carcasses, but Nunatsiavut conservation officer Ian Winters said many people in the area believe DFO hasn't acted quickly enough.
"I think they should have been up here earlier, if you're asking me. A lot of people said the same thing. So, maybe it's not on top of their agenda," he said.
Usually at this time of year seals are on sea ice south of Hopedale, said Winters, but he said there is very little ice there now.
Last month, people in northern Labrador found the bodies of dead seal pups on the coast.
At the time, a federal seal researcher said the early birth of seal pups in Labrador may be an indication the area's seal population has grown too large.
DFO researcher Garry Stenson said that seal population growth could lead to reproductive problems.
"What you expect in a population that is starting to regulate itself are things like lower reproductive rates and variable reproductive rates, but also higher pup mortality and also higher juvenile mortality," he said Monday in St. John's.
Stenson said the harp seal population of Atlantic Canada is now at between eight and nine million. A 2004 assessment of seal stocks estimated the harp seal population in the area at between 4.6 and 7.2 million.
Stenson said the DFO received five reports of seals giving birth on the coast of Labrador in December, although the nomadic sea mammals normally give birth in late February or early March.
He said the early births are happening on land rather than ice floes and it's unlikely the newborn pups will survive.
takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Read the title, pictured a fat retriever dog...
These animal die-offs remind me a bit of crop circles in the following way:
Some of them are not news because they happen all the time. In the case of crop circles, a lot of them are clearly man-made so are not news.
But in both cases a LOT of them are unexplainable. With the crop circles, there simply IS no explanation, so people sort of forget about them. In the case of the die-offs, how many does it take before people say something is definitely going on here, and then ask what it could be.
4th Seal? We’ll see. Time will tell. It does fit in with the perfect storm of the economic/geopolitical climate meltdown going on right now. Let’s see how fast “violent” Christian persecution ramps up in the next few years.
Broken seals ping...
Great. I could use a new set of fur-lined slippers.
Gee where are all the carcasses of drowned polar bears that Al Gore assured us was happening due to global warming? I’m sure the MSM will report Dick Cheney was seal hunting and got carried away...it has to be Bush’s fault somehow.
Anybody answering the phones over at CERN?
Skinning a seal usually takes place after the hak-a-pik is used.
Since ALPO won’t bid on seal carcasses FOB “Assorted Ice Islands”, .......
If I didn’t already have a jen-you-wine, immy-tay-shun harp-seal coat with a sue-ade pleather lining, I’d be happy about all this.
But I do. ;-p
SAVE A SEAL
CLUB A LIBERAL
;-)
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
THE THICK PLOTTEN.
This would be one of the more confounding plagues....
No, this ain’t Bush or Cheney’s fault. This is up North so it has to be Sarah’s fault.
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The seals should be checked for small blunt force trauma. I bet they were killed by falling birds.
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