AAW06_booklet(1-3).qxd4 7/19/06 9:03 AM Page 1 Seals in our seas ©IFAW/Mark Hayes Fisher ©IFAW/Mark Don't forget that there are lots of seals to be seen around our own coastline. The best places to see them are the Making West Coast of South Africa, and the seal island colonies Waves in the Western Cape. Do remember that seals are wild animals and they can give you a nasty bite (even if they look cute) – so do keep your distance. Seals and dogs don't get on very well - so please keep your dogs on a lead, if there are seals in the area. Don't forget to take your litter home with you (or even for better - recycle it!) – litter is a real threat to seals and Seals other wildlife. Did you know? About 100,000 marine mammals and turtles die each year from entanglement or ingestion of plastics. Category 1: Young Animal Superhero Category 5: Community Animal Category 6: Campaigner of the Year This is an award for any young person Superheroes An award that recognises the significant below the age of 16 years old who has An award for a community that takes effect of one person’s campaign to bring shown responsibility and care for animals. responsibility to provide care, love and a about change in an area of animal healthy environment for their animals. welfare. Category 2: Lifetime Dedication Category 7: Independent Animal Superhero Rehabilitation Centre of the Year This award recognises an individual who This award recognises the work of an has unselfishly worked for animal welfare independent rehabilitation centre that throughout their lives. does not rely on funding from any major donors. Category 3: Animal Rehabilitation Superhero Category 8: Most Innovative Animal This award recognises the work of a The Magazine for pets and their people person who dedicated their lives to the Welfare Initiative of the Year rehabilitation of animals affected by An award that recognises an unusual abuse or injury. animal welfare initiative. Category 4: Professional Animal Superhero Category 9: The Habitat Award This is an award to salute the work of a This award is for the person who has veterinary professional who donates a worked to improve habitat and significant amount of their time to environment on behalf of animals. providing care to animals in 7days that can underprivileged communities. Choose who you believe are South Africa’s real Animal Superheroes. Send their name, category and contact details for them and yourself to us: change the world IFAW/Animaltalk Action Awards P O Box 16497 VLAEBERG 8018 or fax them to: (021) 424 2427 or email them to: [email protected] The Magazine for pets and their people Rules: No staff, employees, family or individuals supported by Animaltalk or the International Fund for Animal welfare (IFAW) may be nominated for the IFAW/Animaltalk Action awards. The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into. IFAW Animal Action Week 2006 Nominations close on 31 December 2006. 1-7 October IFAW Animal Action Week 2006 - 1-7 October AAW06_booklet(inter) 7/14/06 12:01 PM Page 1 Harp seals give birth to their young in the Gulf of St Lawrence and off the coast of Other Hunts and Culls Around the World Newfoundland, Canada in late February There are several other commercial annual hunts around the world. About and early March each year turning the ice 75,000 harp seals from the same population as those off the coast of Canada floes into a giant white nursery. Despite a are landed in Greenland’s summer hunt. In Russia more than 40,000 harp decision in the 1980s by the European seals are targeted, plus 40,000 fur seals in Namibia and Norway kills 9,500 Economic Community to ban the import of seals in the White Sea and thousands of others off its own coast. The South whitecoat seal pup pelts, in recent years African fur seal hunt was suspended in 1990. However, the numbers listed more than 95% of the seals killed are less above do not necessarily tell the full story – the Greenland hunt actually kills The Story of Seals than three months old. It is legal to kill seal over 150,000 seals, because for every animal that is landed, an additional pups once they start to moult, which is at one has been killed but not recovered. Scientists point to this as one of the about 14 days old. cruellest aspects of all such hunting. This also The sealers use clubs and guns to kill the leads to unsustainability since the numbers are animals. For the clubs they sometimes have not included in the hunt or population statistics. hakapiks, which have a large metal spike Common or harbour seals are found in UK Scientists believe that seals evolved from land animals - the on the end. One of the problems with waters as well as 35% of the global population of relatives of modern mammals like dogs and bears. These shooting is that seals are sometimes Graner ©IFAW/Florian grey seals. In Scotland there have been repeated creatures took to the sea about 30 million years ago, perhaps wounded and go back into the water to die calls for culls of seals. These calls are led by because there was more food available there. The earliest fossils Many legends and stories have become part slow and painful deaths. fishermen who are concerned that the seals are eating large amounts of fish that they believe of these seal ancestors date back more than 23 million years. of the myth of these beautiful sea creatures. In some tales the seals are said to turn into people would otherwise be available for them to bring ashore. The law in Britain is when they come ashore. In one such story a so vague that seals can even be shot if they are just in an area where fishing gear is in use. Research shows most people in Scotland (80%) think that seals The first seals lived in the Pacific Ocean off beautiful girl turns back into a seal and is are an important part of Scotland’s wildlife. what is now California in the United States. tragically killed by her fisherman husband. The Australian fur seal is also regarded as a problem by fishermen and a Over millions of years they dispersed Although most seals feed mainly on fish the significant number are killed each year in traps and nets or shot. throughout the north Pacific and into the leopard seal eats penguins and sometimes ©IFAW/Petra Deimer ©IFAW/Petra Atlantic via an ancient waterway that other seals. The largest seal population in the separated North and South America. They world belongs to the crabeater seal, which Fisheries Competition later moved into the southern hemisphere. does not actually eat crabs at all. It feeds on The claim that seals are damaging fish stocks is always used as one of the Seals have evolved to take advantage of the krill (small shrimp-like creatures), which it excuses for commercial seal hunts and culls. rich resources of the sea while maintaining filters through teeth that are specially adapted However, scientists say the simplistic argument that seals eat fish and close ties to the land where they rest, moult, for this purpose. therefore if you kill them there will be more fish for fishermen is nonsense. give birth and nurse their young. Today, seals Seals come back to Seals eat many predators of commercially caught fish and removing seals are found all over the world, but the largest land, which is known may in fact have the opposite effect and actually reduce those fish numbers. numbers live in the cold of the Arctic and as ‘hauling out’, for The reality is that the situation is incredibly complex, but overfishing is Antarctic, where food is most abundant. many reasons, Cook ©IFAW/Stewart universally accepted as the primary cause of collapsing fish populations. including resting, Scientists report that the hunt puts the harp moulting, giving seal population in danger because killing birth and nursing. such high numbers each year is not Species such as harp sustainable. A recent study shows that the and hooded seals Canadian government’s plan for harp seals ©IFAW/David White ©IFAW/David haul out on to ice and turn this frozen risks reducing the population by 70%. paradise into a vast nursery with thousands of Scientists also point out that there is no seal pups and their mothers. evidence that killing seals helps protect fish stocks. The collapse of the cod stocks in Some seals migrate thousands of kilometres Canada was caused by overfishing – even between their feeding and breeding grounds. most fishermen agree that is the case. Others dive to incredible depths – the northern elephant seal holds the record for the deepest With subsidies in the late 1990s of $20 dive at more than 1,000 metres. The longest million CDN as well as other expenses, the dive recorded is one hour, 13 minutes in the hunt costs Canadian taxpayers money and Antarctic by a Weddell seal. yet accounts for only a small part of a fisherman’s income. Cook ©IFAW/Stewart They really are amazing animals! ©IFAW/Stewart Cook ©IFAW/Stewart Elephant Sized Nose Balloon The largest of all species is the northern elephant seal, with male ‘bulls’ Adult male hooded seals have the strange ability to inflate the black sac, or weighing up to nearly four tonnes, as heavy as a large truck. They can ‘hood’, which hangs over the end of their nose.