Something (else) is Rotten
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by Debbie MacKenzie, March 8, 2005
Which is worse,
environmentally: the remote possibility that a ship will spill one drop of
oil, or the deliberate dumping of a massive amount
of harmful waste into an area of sensitive fish habitat, where a
threatened cod stock struggles to survive? Canadian law strictly prohibits
each of these environmental hazards. But law enforcement varies, as
sometimes officials seem to look the other way. Consider the polluting
impact of the seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Last week, the Farley Mowat, a ship belonging to seal hunt protesters, the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was detained for four days in Halifax
Harbour while federal officials enforced a new, strict anti-oil-pollution
order on the vessel. The activists hastily complied with unexpected new
orders, and installed what had till then been officially considered
unnecessary, a redundant back-up system for waste oil containment. Had
they been unable to modify the Farley Mowat so quickly, the protesters
might have been prevented from reaching the Gulf of St. Lawrence in time
for the mid-March start of the seal hunt. But, better safe than sorry.
(Photo of the Farley Mowat in Halifax Harbour, at right,
from www.seashepherd.org )
The conscientious concern of our federal officials in safeguarding the
sensitive Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem against the harmful effects of
oil pollution is commendable. After all, fish and other marine animals in
the Gulf face more intense threats from habitat degradation than they do
in many other regions in Atlantic Canada. The Gulf contains relatively
stagnant bottom water because it is sheltered from the great ocean
currents that skirt the outer coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This
physical characteristic of the Gulf of St. Lawrence makes it naturally
vulnerable to the deadly problem of rot settling in on bottom, a subtle
process by which bacterial decomposition of dead organisms drains oxygen
from the water, and renders it lethal to fish. Called hypoxia, or “dead
zones,” this is a serious rising threat in semi-enclosed waterways
globally.
DFO scientists have recently published their finding that
a massive region of the Gulf contains bottom water
oxygen levels so low today that cod and other fish can be (and likely are
being) sickened or killed as a result. The cod stock in the northern
Gulf is in such bad shape that it has been listed under the Species At
Risk Act. Under the Fisheries Act it is illegal to damage fish habitat by
adding any “deleterious substance” to the water. “Deleterious” to current
conditions in the Gulf is the addition of any more rot-fodder to the
bottom water, because such pollution will only cause hypoxic conditions to
intensify. This is not a new concept.
Why, then, does DFO allow seal hunters to abandon hundreds of thousands of
seal corpses on the ice in the middle of the Gulf? Sealers normally remove
only the pelts, and leave the seal corpses to rot. This practice, added to
unknown numbers of wounded seals that escape to die later, results in a
rain of sinking, rotting seal corpses that can only work to further stifle
- quite literally - the recovery of cod stocks.
Dead
seal flesh dumped annually into the waters of the Gulf by sealers likely
exceeds 1000 tons, and the ensuing rot can certainly suffocate cod.
However, no permits for “at sea disposal” of bulk organic waste appear to
have been issued to the sealers, (although the law normally requires
permits for the disposal of far smaller quantities of fish waste), and no
appropriate “environmental impact assessment” has been done (although, as
the agency responsible for enabling the seal hunt, DFO is obliged to do
this under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act). What a mess - and
to think that this seal hunt has been sold to the public as a “cod stock
recovery plan.”
Sealers should face unlawful pollution charges if they abandon seal
corpses on the ice or in the water. And, to be safe and to be fair,
federal officials should now take the precaution of detaining all sealing
vessels in port, and enforcing compliance with the new oil pollution
prevention rules, before any of these boats are allowed to enter the Gulf
this spring. Sadly, however, it seems it is only the seal hunt protesters,
who decry the ecological insanity and the inherent cruelty of the hunt,
that risk being charged with any seal hunt-related offence by Canadian law
enforcement officials.
What, besides pollution prevention, might help counteract the growing
“dead zone” in the Gulf of St. Lawrence? The answer, ironically, is more
live seals.
(Photo
above, rotting seal corpse left on ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by
sealers, reproduced from
www.harpseals.org - photo credit IFAW
)
Dead
seal flesh dumped annually into the waters of the Gulf by sealers likely
exceeds 1000 tons, and the ensuing rot can certainly suffocate cod.
However, no permits for “at sea disposal” of bulk organic waste appear to
have been issued to the sealers, (although the law normally requires
permits for the disposal of far smaller quantities of fish waste), and no
appropriate “environmental impact assessment” has been done (although, as
the agency responsible for enabling the seal hunt, DFO is obliged to do
this under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act). What a mess - and
to think that this seal hunt has been sold to the public as a “cod stock
recovery plan.”
