Request for Seal Study Made

[Karl F]

From the Cape Cod Chronicle:

Selectmen To Sign Letter Urging Seal Population Study

by Alan Pollock

CHATHAM — At the request of surfer and commercial fisherman Paul Bremser, the board of selectmen Tuesday voted to send a letter to Senator Edward Kennedy urging a federal study of the seal population off Chatham. Bremser told selectmen he was giving a surfing lesson to a 15-year-old boy when he saw a great white shark eat a seal off South Beach on July 18.

Bremser told the board he is working with John Chisholm of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries, and hopes to locate and tag sharks. His ultimate goal, he said, was to challenge the federal Marine Mammals Protection Act.

“I’m trying to do the impossible, namely to have Congress review the act and encourage more study,” he said.

The letter said local fishermen, boaters and beachgoers have seen the seal population rapidly expand, and questions whether the increased numbers of seals are responsible for the decline in river herring and commercially important inshore fish.

Bremser said he has been researching the local seal population, “and there’s not a whole lot of data.” But as an inshore commercial fisherman, “every scrod that I cut open to bring home to my family to eat is full of worms,” he said. The worms are parasites spread by seal feces, Bremser said. “Our fish are basically unmarketable,” he said.

Bremser drafted the letter with help from Tom Rudolph, research director with the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association. The seal issue is “something that’s been on our radar screen for awhile,” Rudolph told the board. Rudolph said there are “major data gaps” in the information about seals and the parasitic worms showing up in local fish.

Rudolph said the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which protects gray seals, lacks scientific vision. The act encourages seal population growth, but “there’s really no sort of rebuilding targets,” like the kind seen with commercial fish stocks, he said. The letter creates the opportunity for dialogue about seals, Rudolph said.

Less than a half hour after first seeing the document, the board of selectmen Tuesday voted 4-1 to send Bremser’s letter. Selectman Debbie Connors said the local commercial fishing fleet has long seen the seals as harmful.

“I’ve heard this from a lot of people out there,” she said. The letter is a good idea, and shows that seals are not just “cute fuzzy little creatures.” Selectman Ronald Bergstrom agreed, but asked whether it is fruitful to study seal populations.

“What practical steps can be taken based on the knowledge that will be gained?” he asked. Rudolph replied that it is too soon to know, but that a good starting point is to count the seals.

Selectman Sean Summers said he has also heard complaints about the seals, and as a regular boater around North Beach, knows “it’s not a nice smell out there.”

The lone voice against sending the letter was Chairman David Whitcomb.

“I need a little more time to read these things before I put my signature to it,” he said.

Several experts, interviewed by The Chronicle before and after Tuesday’s meeting gave information that appeared to contradict some of Bremser’s statements.

Noted shark researcher Greg Skomal of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries, who identified himself as John Chisholm’s supervisor, said he was interested to hear about Bremser’s reported shark sighting and is aware of his plans to try to attract and photograph sharks, “but that’s his own effort,” Skomal said.

“We have no formal working relationship. Paul reported a white shark incident,” he said.

Skomal also challenged Bremser’s assertion that good population figures are unavailable for gray seals around Chatham. Dr. Gordon Waring of NOAA Fisheries has been tracking seals for decades, he said.

“This is the responsibility of the National Marine Fisheries Service and they’ve been tending to it for many years,” Skomal said. Waring could not be reached for comment for this article.

Tony LaCasse, spokesman for the New England Aquarium, said numbers of gray seals in the North Atlantic have risen steadily under federal protection, particularly since the 1960s when regulators offered a bounty on seals. Locally, fishermen were offered $2 for each seal nose they produced. By the 1970s, seals “were essentially absent from the Massachusetts and the Cape Cod coasts,” LaCasse said.

The New England Aquarium recently held a photo op at Hardings Beach to release a seal it had rehabilitated.

To appreciate the economic impacts of seals around Chatham, LaCasse said people should also consider the burgeoning seal watch business.

“I’m sure that, as a whole, it’s been very good for the local business community,” he said.

LaCasse said people should also know that large sharks, like makos, threshers and great whites, primarily eat seals. “People are not on the menu of large sharks,” he said. The last shark-related death in New England happened in 1936, when a boy from Dorchester was killed by a shark off Mattapoisett.

Skomal challenged Bremser’s assertion that the increased number of seals around Chatham is related to an increased risk of “unfavorable human interaction, including shark attacks.”

Research indicates that when there are more seals in a given area or over a shorter period of time, there are more predation by white sharks.

“That does not necessary correlate to an increased number of white shark attacks on humans,” he said.

Mike Brady, refuge manager at the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, said two years ago there was evidence of shark attacks on seals, in the form of half-eaten carcasses. But this summer, there’s been no evidence of dead seals, he said.

The reason, Brady speculated, is that a number of the seals have probably relocated to other areas, possibly responding to predation, or possibly because their food source has migrated. Studies of seal scat indicate that they largely feed on sand lances, which appear to be less available recently.

Brady said he has observed smaller numbers of seals around South Monomoy late this summer, and has observed a group of several hundred which have apparently taken up residence near Aunt Lydia’s Cove. Though numbers are down sharply in recent months, Brady said there are almost certainly still a large number of seals in the system, possibly having relocated to other sand spits like Muskeget Island.

Interviewed after the meeting, Bremser said he has also noticed the decline in seal numbers around Monomoy.

Bremser admitted the effort to control the protected seal population may be futile, but said his letter will be beneficial if it only opens a dialogue about the problem.

8/17/06