B.C. seals, sea lions could wind up on menus
First Nations asked to harvest mammals for toxin tests before building industry
VANCOUVER — If B.C. harbour seals are fit to eat, they could soon find themselves on the menu in fancy restaurants from Montreal to Beijing and beyond.
First Nations hunters and fishers up and down B.C.’s coast are being asked to harvest seals for lab tests that will determine whether they are safe for human consumption.
The Pacific Balance Pinniped Society is asking for samples of liver, heart, flesh and blubber for laboratory testing with an eye to selling into markets hungry for seal and sea lion meat in North America, Europe and Asia.
Many coastal First Nations are already entitled to hunt seals and sea lions under their Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy agreements with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, society director Thomas Sewid said.
The society is to meet with the federal department’s Fisheries Management and Resource Planning group on Thursday to authorize commercial harvesting and to request that hunting rights be extended to all coastal First Nations.
They want to reduce seal and sea lion numbers to take pressure off B.C.’s endangered and threatened chinook stocks, while developing markets for pinniped products from meat and omega-3-rich blubber to pelts and penile bones, which are used in traditional Chinese medicines. (Pinnipeds are mammals that have both front and rear flippers.)
“We are coming to them with a plan and a budget,” society president Roy Jones Jr. said.
The society — with First Nations directors hailing from Tsawwassen to Haida Gwaii — plans to start harvesting seals for testing at labs in B.C. and Manitoba after the meeting.
“If it passes the Canadian standards for human consumption and for pet food, that will help us develop our market,” Sewid said.
“We know there is a monstrous market in Asia, for high-end restaurants in North America, and for pet food.”
Seal blubber has a high concentration of natural fatty acids, which can be marketed as a fish oil supplement and used in cosmetics.
“The population of pinnipeds from California to Alaska — harbour seals, Steller and California sea lions — has exploded,” said Sewid.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada estimates that there are about 105,000 harbour seals in B.C. coastal waters, roughly 10 times the number recorded in the early 1970s.
The society does not support a large-scale cull of pinnipeds. Rather, it said it seeks to bring the population back into historical balance by returning to a First Nations hunting tradition.
Recent archeological work at a 14,000-year-old village site on Triquet Island, north of Vancouver Island, revealed that local First Nations have hunted seals and sea lions for food for thousands of years.
A study published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences estimates that seals and sea lions in Puget Sound consume about nine times the amount of chinook salmon they ate before 1970, and that the rise of harbour seals “coincides directly” with the decline of chinook salmon.
Harbour seals that specialize in eating juvenile salmon eat up to 100 times more individual fish than those that eat mature salmon, according to a separate study.
Some Indigenous and commercial fishermen, along with recreational anglers, have said they believe seals are eating millions of chinook in the Salish Sea and contributing to the decline of southern resident killer whales.
Last summer, the United States authorized states in the Pacific Northwest and First Nations there to kill more than 900 California sea lions a year to protect vulnerable steelhead and chinook runs, some of which were described as being on the verge of extinction by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The hunt proponents say there is little public appetite for a cull of seals and sea lions in British Columbia.
“That’s not what we are proposing,” Jones said.
“We are talking about starting an industry that will create 4,000 jobs on the coast and lessen the impact of these animals on all fin fish.”
The group has identified two processing plants on Vancouver Island with capacity to process commercially harvested pinnipeds, along with a pet food company based in the Lower Mainland, said society director Ken Pearce, a non-Aboriginal sportsman.
Independent cetologist Gary Sutton said that seal populations in the Salish Sea have been stable for years and that their numbers are being held in check by sealeating transient killer whales.
Transient killer whales were typically spotted in the area no more than 100 times a year in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That number jumped in the early 2000s to more than 300, and by 2017 there were more than 800 appearances.
Transient killer whales are estimated to have consumed 1,100 seals in 2017, he said.
Sutton warned that hunting pinnipeds in large numbers could have unintended consequences.
“If you take out a whole bunch of seals, the hake they mostly feed on could increase, and they also eat juvenile salmon,” he said. “Now the hake are eating the salmon and the herring, which are food for adult salmon.”
“There are just too many unknowns to point at seals and say they are the reason that chinook are declining,” he said.