Seal Slaughter

[paulb]

they were here first.

You'll have to be careful with that argument. It tends to be heard most often from petulant kids in the playground, the BNP or your "beloved" anti-soothmoother faction . Presumably you do not also apply it to humans?

err as a soothmoother im not sure what faction your talking about. im concerned that someone feels its ok to slaughter seal pups. if an adult was constantly raiding the nets but there is no excuse for this behaviour.

i thought they had shown a fall in the number of seals around shetland. maybe there should be some research into how much damage is caused by seals and what the costs are. and while they are doing that lets have an impact study into the chemicals used on the nets.

[paulb]

thats an idea lets breed furly cute snakes to eat the bunnies. i think we would need to except a gm version as the natural version may take awhile

[Njugle]

allways think its funny that people jump to their defence as they are cute animals as if they were somthing like snakes etc people wouldnt care half as much.

^^ Exactly. Sheep, Cattle and Chickens are being slaughtered by the hundred every second.

 

Out of interest, substantial numbers of adult seal pests were/are shot relatively humanely around Shetland when they take a persistent liking to fish cages. A hired 'bounty hunter' shot approximately fifty in one go off Scalloway some years ago. [He is a guy of the era whereby seals were a valid and succulent foodstuff, with a lovely skin to boot - and he still eats them].

There used to be colonies of that size on the larger isles like Hildasay. Now if you see more than half a dozen it's unusual (and it's not the killer whales knocking them off in that area )

 

In this recent case one would assume that the nature of the pup deaths suggest more than natural lossage though, otherwise charging would be pointless.

 

For a different perspective; the year before last half a dozen seal pups were found beheaded at North Nesting. Now, I'm no particular tree hugger, but slaughtering pups in a manner such as that is pretty unacceptable.

 

I also recall a guy from whalsay who worked on a salmon farm up north who used to set the 'seal creel' for seals that damaged the fish. A bullet to the brain is one thing, but drowning is pretty coorse. Let alone decapitating pups, imagine it- if you dare. A haunting and disturbing thought. You'd have thought a reasoned and practical choice of method would be a club?

 

But, of course, some folk still drown puppies too.

[EM]

err as a soothmoother im ...

Exactly. It is my expectation that were someone to express some xenophobic line about them having more rights due to being in Shetland first, you would likely not agree. "Being first" seems to me to generally be quite a spurious argument.

[scooper]

JAStewart you say killing seals is bad??? try telling de uncle dat!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[beachcaster]

Grey seals are nothing short of vermin and have been allowed to breed with no constraints for far too long.

 

Conservative estimates for the UK grey seal populations vary around the 110,000 mark (National Trust 2008 Figure). The average seal eats around 5-7kg of fish per day, which means that as much as 770,000kg of fish are eaten by seals every day, and 281,050,000kg of fish every year!

 

I wonder if Brussels has figured this in to their equations when they try to cut our fishermens quotas, and tell them they have to stay tied to the pier for a certain amount of days each month to allow the fish stocks to recover.

 

Personally i think the seals should be culled before the population levels get out of hand.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

^^^^^^What utter Rubbish, how much fish has been dumped into the North Sea?

Seal's are Vermin? Drunk speeding Shetland MOTORISTS are

[Guest Anonymous]

Seal pups look nice and cuddly, and that's about all the good they are. Adult seals are only good for their fur, although their also a source of very high protein meat, not that I would eat it but I have been offered it locally.

 

In these days of synthetic clothing materials and factory produced high protein foodstuffs there is no longer any use for seals, so kill the lot of them and leave more fish for human consumption.

 

It saddens me to think that this man will likely get a criminal record, when in reality he was performing what I and many others consider to be a public service. He should be given a medal.

[Malachy]

A hired 'bounty hunter' shot approximately fifty in one go off Scalloway some years ago. [He is a guy of the era whereby seals were a valid and succulent foodstuff, with a lovely skin to boot - and he still eats them].

It seems that eating seals in Shetland was never particularly widespread. Generally, skins and blubber would be taken and the meat thrown away, which seems quite strange considering how little food people had for much of the time. I know that some people ate them, some of the time, but it doesn't seem to have been commonplace (as it is in, say, Greenland). Skin was the important resource. I've never heard a proper explanation for this, though there could be superstitious reasons for not eating seals, relating to selkie stories. I'd be very interested to know.

 

As for this news story, I think seals are plentiful enough that killing one or two if you want to eat them is not a problem, but indiscriminate killing simply because you object to seals is not acceptable. But sadly, Auld Rasmie's attitude is quite common - seals aren't useful to us, therefore we should kill them. If that philosophy was carried out to its logical conclusion we would live in a pretty empty world.

[paulb]

thats why your in norway lets go kill some large marine mammals. yummy lets slaughter a few whales for research of courses. the figures of fish eaten are not just commercial fish and if they are better at catching the fish than man good for them. should we not then slaughter all the other wildlife to make sure that the factory farming of fish is safe. what happens when they all go bust. what are the tourist going to travel up here to see.

after all otters are not native and they eat fish so there for are "bad". there has to be a balance between nature and man.

if a crofter or landowner was to be caught killing wildlife they would lose there sfp. so if the fish farmers are found to be slaughtering protected animals they should lose there rights to farm.

[Njugle]

It seems that eating seals in Shetland was never particularly widespread. Generally, skins and blubber would be taken and the meat thrown away,

An interesting point Malachy. Reading Edmondston or the like you would believe that finding a seal to shoot seemed infrequent, but the skin and blubber do seem to take precedence over the flesh, if it was generally eaten at all. The guy I know of who eats them refers to the meat as being as fine a food as you could eat, that melts in the mouth. In a time when people of all ages risked their lives scrambling up and down the banks for some fishy bird eggs you'd think "melt in the mouth" meat would have been a treat. I'm going to have to ask around on this point.

 

sadly, Auld Rasmie's attitude is quite common - seals aren't useful to us, therefore we should kill them. If that philosophy was carried out to its logical conclusion we would live in a pretty empty world.

 

Too true. Even within a blinkered human-centric view of the world there are a couple of glaring examples in recent times. Monkfish and sharks. Monks were dumped until fairly recently, then in stark contrast became high value delicacy. Funny how attitudes change. Sharks are still being slaughtered worldwide for their fins alone. Science has more recently identified that sharks alone do not suffer cancer and may yield a cure for human cancer. Not bad for a disposable foodstuff.

 

Who knows, when the oil runs out humans may be glad of a bit of sealskin as a variant from the all powerful methane belching bovine gods skins we currently propagate.

[Guest Anonymous]

The killing of Whales is something which I am 1000% against, and for that reason refuse to enter a fish shop here because the nasty b's sell whale meat. GRRR!!

Whales are intelligent mammals and deserve respect, whereas seals are a waste of space, except perhaps as a valuable food source for Orcas.

[jimmy parks]

I was speakin to a seal the other day and he said Auld Rasmie was a waste of space

[crofter]

I could understand it if he had caught them damaging his nets or attacking his fish, but this seems to be taking it a tad too far! It'll be interesting to see what excuses he uses - prevention?

 

I suppose he could argue that he has been doing it for years, since his grandfather taught him to use a club, and it is a breach of his human rights to deny him the opportunity to follow his cultural traditions.

 

It is not that long since commercial seal hunting stopped in Shetland - remember the tacky sealskin souvenir products?

[Seaflech]

In these days of synthetic clothing materials and factory produced high protein foodstuffs there is no longer any use for seals, so kill the lot of them and leave more fish for human consumption.

 

I don't think I've ever encountered a more arrogant, ignorant or obnoxious viewpoint in one single sentence as that one above.

What the hell gives you the right to decide that if a species is of no use to humans then it should be wiped off the face of the Earth? Cavemen used to club things to death, but at least they would make use of what they killed, either eat it or use its fur/skin/bones to help them survive. This is the 21st century we're in, and to kill animals just for the sake of it is pretty barbaric.

 

It saddens me to think that this man will likely get a criminal record, when in reality he was performing what I and many others consider to be a public service. He should be given a medal.

 

Public service? Think he'll get an MBE for it?