More Seals

[Skitterpop]

Chatham fisherman Paul Bremser can't shake the image of the great white shark exploding from the water next to him with a gray seal in its jaws. He was giving a surfing lesson off Lighthouse Beach in Chatham in July, and watched the water around him turn red from the seal's blood.
But it's a perceived threat to his livelihood that is really giving Bremser nightmares.
He claims the 5,000 to 6,000 gray seals that have arrived on Chatham's Monomoy Island and South Beach shores in the past decade are depleting local stocks of fish, including cod, haddock and flounder that fishermen depend on for their living. Bremser and other members of the Cape Hook Fishermen's Association want government officials to investigate, he said this week.
''It's to the point where we feel like we're in heavy competition with them,'' Bremser said.
Gray seals, like all marine mammals, are protected under the federal 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Under the law, it is illegal to kill or harass any marine mammal.
Bremser is gathering support from Lower Cape selectmen and residents to pressure Congress to authorize an official study of gray seals to see whether their numbers and activities in Cape waters - there is also a colony on Muskegat Island off Martha's Vineyard - are impacting the environment negatively.
So far, Chatham and Eastham selectmen have endorsed Bremser's call for research. He plans to make his case before the Orleans board next week, and will go to boards in Harwich, Wellfleet and Provincetown in coming weeks.
The Cape Hook Fishermen's Association ''strongly supports'' Bremser's quest, Tom Rudolph, research director for the group, told Eastham selectmen Monday.
Federal scientists would welcome more money for research but funding is scarce, said Gordon Waring, fisheries research biologist at National Marine Fisheries Service in Woods Hole.
In Chatham, there is cautious support for a research project, said David Whitcomb, chairman of the selectmen. In an effort to protect endangered shorebirds, the town has been the site of federal wildlife removal projects over the past 10 years that have resulted in the deaths of gulls and coyotes.
''Obviously, there's sensitivity over this,'' Whitcomb said. ''But the way (Bremser's) going about it, with a study, seems to make sense.''
The gray seal population has ''without question'' increased, said Chatham Harbor Master Stuart Smith. He hears from angry fishermen as well as satisfied tourists and seal-watch business owners, who enjoy seeing the 600- to 1,000-pound seals with the distinctive horselike head. ''I think a study is more than warranted,'' he said.
Any government study of gray seals on Cape Cod needs to include colonies in Maine and Nova Scotia as well, according to seal expert James Gilbert of the University of Maine in Orono. The seals that started staying year-round on Cape Cod in the late 1980s are from the same population that inhabits Sable Island in Canada and off the Maine coast, he said.
The diet of gray seals varies greatly, depending on what is available, Gilbert said. The average seal will eat about 5 pounds of fish a day and venture up to 50 miles in search of food, he said. Sand eels, which are plentiful off Monomoy Island, are a gray seal favorite.
Federal regulations have cut the number of days fishermen can catch fish, but on days when they can fish, it is common for a cod fishing boat to haul in about 800 pounds of fish a day.
Canadian research shows that the Sable Island gray seal population has been growing at a rate of about 13 percent a year, but a recent research paper based on the 2004 pupping season showed the population's growth rate had slowed to about 7 percent, Waring said.
Cape Cod fishermen are not alone in their fear of competition from gray seals, according to Waring. Several European countries, including Sweden and Norway, have culling programs. Canada allows 10,400 gray seals to be taken by hunters in Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Web site.
Beyond competition, another concern fishermen have about the seals is that the animals are carriers of cod worms, a parasite that can infect commercial fish species. Fish are infected through the scat of seals. No study has ever shown a relationship between the size of a seal population and a cod worm infestation, according to Gilbert.