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Yes, we f'd up the ecosystem and we're gonna pay for it. The ocean isn't an aquarium for us to manage. We killed seals, whales, fish, sharks, etc. to the point of oblivion. You then protect them, but pollute the water and harvest their food.
Claim victory for recovering populations, but the ecosystem is so fragile b/c of the damage. Stripers come back but are increasingly sickly b/c we're wiping out bunker. Recovering seals overpopulate b/c they are unchecked by predators such as the big sharks or orcas... oh yeah, we wiped them out too, or they vacated cause there weren't any seals.
The answer isn't to wipe out the seals again. The answer is to stop wiping out bunker, herring and mackerel. If they are abundant, seals won't be eating bass.
And hopefully the top predators will return and keep the seal populations down, but it won't happen all at once.
Seals aren't the problem... we are. Before we came along, there were seals and there were bass and there were sharks, etc, etc. and it wasn't a "problem"
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