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rfmcdonaldThe European Parliament just voted to endorse an EU-wide ban on seal products.
I thank that august body for doing so. No, it's not because of a misplaced Europhilia, out of a desire for increased Canadian-European integration regardless of Canadian national interests. If anything, this trade dispute might diminish the chances for transatlantic integration.
No, it's not because of animal rights. Well, non-trivially it does, but only to a certain extent. As I type this, my cat, Shakespeare, is sitting at my feet, waiting for me to finish. He has a few habits, actually: when I come in, he lets me grabbing him up into my arms and rubbing his belly until he lets me know he's done and then lies down on the carpet where I can rub his belly again, he clearly has an ongoing memory of and relationship with Jerry's apartment and new kitten, his favourite toy is a green cotton mouse tied to a shoelace, and so on. I'm tempted to call it a personality. Shakespeare's clearly isn't as complex as a human's, encephalization quotient being what it is, but there is something there. What's there in a seal's mind?
This certainly has nothing to do with ecological claims, one way or the other. For the time being, I'll trust the pro-sealing factions which say--contra other authorities--that the seal herds in question aren't endangenered and can sustain the hunt. The allegations of pro-sealers that a seal hunt could bring the lost cod fisheries back are still ludicrous. Their disappearance is a product of decisions made by human being, through policy decisions that allowed non-Canadian fishers to loot the waters of the tail of the Grand Banks (outside of canadian waters, hence, juersidction) and encouraged Canadians to loot the waters under Canadian jurisdiction, setting up fish processing plants almost everywhere voters could be found and giving licenses out to bigger and more efficient trawlers. There aren't any cod? Blame the human-driven ecological engineering that displaced the cod as the Grand Banks' apex predator and, instead, let the shrimp flourish. The long-term picture, it should be noted, is quite grim.
Why do I support the European Parliament's ban? Simply put, the seal hunt--in Newfoundland and Labrador, and elsewhere in Canada--is the product of a subsistence economy marked by extreme scarcity.
How difficult is your life if you have to head out onto creaking ice masses with dozens of your peers to club and skin marine mammals just to make a living?
Fortunately, you don't have to any more. Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the thirteen federal-level territorial jurisdictions that makes up Canada, and it's just as much a part of the Canadian welfare state as any other. Newfoundland and Labrador is even a have province, richer than the Canadian average, for the first time in its history. Now as never before, Newfoundlanders aren't trapped in poverty-stricken outports: they can take part in the new fisheries (as long as they last) , they can go to St. John's, they can go west to find work. There's as much reason for the Canadian state to subsidize an archaic--never mind ecologically pointless and arguably inhumane--economic practice,--one might as well expect it to subsidize bush farms in the far north of Ontario and Québec, or timber clear-cutting in British Columbia, or the Atlantic Canadian communities of old where a dozen weeks of work gave you a year's worth of welfare. This article, arguing that Canada should accept a seal hunt ban from the European Union if the Union accepted a moratorium on Grand Banks fisheries sounds like a good bargaining position to me.
So, again, thank you Europe: You've saved Canadians from themselves.
The European Parliament voted Tuesday to endorse an EU-wide ban on seal products in protest at commercial hunting methods, sparking a threat from Canada to take action at the World Trade Organisation.
The move, backed by much of the European public and animal rights groups, was approved by 550 votes to 49 at the parliament in Strasbourg. The ban will enter force for the next commercial seal hunt season in 2010.
The decision to reject seal products came on the eve of a visit to Prague by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to launch free trade talks with the European Union.
The Canadian government maintains that the 350-year-old hunt is crucial for some 6,000 North Atlantic fishermen who rely on it for up to 35 percent of their annual income.
Ottawa authorized the slaughter of 338,000 seals this year, insisting the hunt does not threaten the species. But a slump in pelt prices has meant fewer hunters on ice floes off Canada's Atlantic coast.
I thank that august body for doing so. No, it's not because of a misplaced Europhilia, out of a desire for increased Canadian-European integration regardless of Canadian national interests. If anything, this trade dispute might diminish the chances for transatlantic integration.
No, it's not because of animal rights. Well, non-trivially it does, but only to a certain extent. As I type this, my cat, Shakespeare, is sitting at my feet, waiting for me to finish. He has a few habits, actually: when I come in, he lets me grabbing him up into my arms and rubbing his belly until he lets me know he's done and then lies down on the carpet where I can rub his belly again, he clearly has an ongoing memory of and relationship with Jerry's apartment and new kitten, his favourite toy is a green cotton mouse tied to a shoelace, and so on. I'm tempted to call it a personality. Shakespeare's clearly isn't as complex as a human's, encephalization quotient being what it is, but there is something there. What's there in a seal's mind?
This certainly has nothing to do with ecological claims, one way or the other. For the time being, I'll trust the pro-sealing factions which say--contra other authorities--that the seal herds in question aren't endangenered and can sustain the hunt. The allegations of pro-sealers that a seal hunt could bring the lost cod fisheries back are still ludicrous. Their disappearance is a product of decisions made by human being, through policy decisions that allowed non-Canadian fishers to loot the waters of the tail of the Grand Banks (outside of canadian waters, hence, juersidction) and encouraged Canadians to loot the waters under Canadian jurisdiction, setting up fish processing plants almost everywhere voters could be found and giving licenses out to bigger and more efficient trawlers. There aren't any cod? Blame the human-driven ecological engineering that displaced the cod as the Grand Banks' apex predator and, instead, let the shrimp flourish. The long-term picture, it should be noted, is quite grim.
There is growing evidence that the trawlers may not only have scooped up all the fish but also laid to waste the entire seafloor environment those fish required to survive. In the late 1990s marine scientists began assembling evidence that modern fishing gear causes massive physical and ecological disturbances. The continental shelf--where most ecological and, thus, fishing activity takes place--is not a featureless plain of mud. Rocky outcroppings, boulders, cobbles and pebbles provide "structure" on and around which living communities can thrive. Here, juvenile cod and other fish can hide from predators and find small crustaceans, crabs and other creatures to eat.
Modern bottom trawls destroy these structures like gigantic plows. Dragging the bottom for cod or flounder, nets are spread open by a pair of metal "doors" or "boards" weighing tens to thousands of pounds. The bottom of the trawl mouth is a thick cable bearing the weight of 50- to 700-pound steel weights that keep the trawl on the seabed. Many drag tickler chains to scare shrimp or fish off the bottom and into the net. Scallop, oyster and crab dredges consist of steel frames and chain-mesh bags that plow through the seabed to sift out target species. With each pass, trawls and dredges overturn, scrape or sweep away boulders and cobbles, crush or ensnare bottom plants and structure-building animals, and kill or disrupt worms and other animals in the sediment. Most species take months or years to reestablish themselves, some take decades or centuries. None are given that much time.
In a 1998 paper, Les Watling of the University of Maine and Elliot Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute likened trawling's effect on the seabed to that of forest clear-cutting, except that it occurs over an area of the Earth's surface that is 150 times greater. The factory trawlers may have destroyed so much juvenile cod habitat that the Banks are no longer capable of nursing large numbers of the fish. Recovery would require decades without trawling.
Why do I support the European Parliament's ban? Simply put, the seal hunt--in Newfoundland and Labrador, and elsewhere in Canada--is the product of a subsistence economy marked by extreme scarcity.
In areas where renewable resources were scarce or uncertain, widely separated, and accessible only seasonally, settlers developed strategies geared to the exploitation of these resources throughout the year. The utilization pattern was normally woven into a seasonal round of activities.
Under ideal conditions, each exploited resource complemented the others throughout the year. In the northern parts of Newfoundland there was usually a period of relative inactivity in spring, after woodswork had ceased and before the first appearance of the cod stocks. For settlers moving into the harbours and coves of coastal Labrador and northeastern Newfoundland during the 18th and 19th centuries, however, this period often became a time of intensive and commercially rewarding activity.
How difficult is your life if you have to head out onto creaking ice masses with dozens of your peers to club and skin marine mammals just to make a living?
Fortunately, you don't have to any more. Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the thirteen federal-level territorial jurisdictions that makes up Canada, and it's just as much a part of the Canadian welfare state as any other. Newfoundland and Labrador is even a have province, richer than the Canadian average, for the first time in its history. Now as never before, Newfoundlanders aren't trapped in poverty-stricken outports: they can take part in the new fisheries (as long as they last) , they can go to St. John's, they can go west to find work. There's as much reason for the Canadian state to subsidize an archaic--never mind ecologically pointless and arguably inhumane--economic practice,--one might as well expect it to subsidize bush farms in the far north of Ontario and Québec, or timber clear-cutting in British Columbia, or the Atlantic Canadian communities of old where a dozen weeks of work gave you a year's worth of welfare. This article, arguing that Canada should accept a seal hunt ban from the European Union if the Union accepted a moratorium on Grand Banks fisheries sounds like a good bargaining position to me.
So, again, thank you Europe: You've saved Canadians from themselves.
