User:Arie12345/sandbox

The annual slaughter of the Cape Fur Seal along the coast of Namibia

The annual seal hunt taking place along the coast of Namibia is a disgusting display of how cruel people can be. The argument is always on for what is the most cruel and dangerous creature in all of God’s creation.

We want to hunt every shark to extinction when a person is attacked. When Steve Irwin was killed, a great uproar was created. When a crocodile kills a child, the crocodile is hunted and killed. The same goes for a hippopotamus. When an elephant goes rogue, hunters are summoned to remove it. Any animal acting on instinct is killed when it harms a human.

But what exactly happens to humans who are murdering innocent animals? I am not referring to hunters killing animals for meat. I refer to the pure cruelty taking place from the 1st of July every year until the end of November: the annual seal hunt along the Namibian coast line.

Thousands of innocent seals are murdered each year by people who have nothing better to do with their time. In the past, the hunting season was from August until November. This year the Namibian government decided that it should be from July until November. Apparently this is to help fulfill the required quota.

What the people don’t realize is that figures shows that there simply is not enough seals to fulfill the quota. Extending the hunting season won’t help to get the quota full. There are just a certain number of pups born each year and there are only a certain number of bulls. These are the main target of the hunters of cullers as they want to be called. More pups and bulls won’t fall out of the sky.

Seals play a very important role in the ecosystem of the ocean. They are part of the food chain. They eat and get eaten. Same as with humans; some die and some live. Just as humans has an important part to play in the ecosystem, so does the seals. Humans are in charge of regulating the population of creatures, including themselves.

Seals help to keep the fish population in stable. They consume fish, and other fish consume them. That is the circle of life. If we as people remove the seals from the food chain, what will regulate the fish population? We might argue that we are able to control the fish population by increasing fishing quotas, but that is wrong. Again we only target certain fish; fish of certain sizes. What we don’t realize is that the natural order has a way of controlling these things better than a human can ever even imagine.

Seal hunting has been a source of income for Namibia for a very long time. People across the globe where once hunting and killing seals brutally only for profits. Luckily, some countries have discovered that they are actually interfering with the natural order of things. Thus seal hunting has been banned in most countries. In fact all countries as banned it except Namibia and Canada. The problem with seal hunting is that the people are killing the pups and bulls. The pups are the most vital part of the colony. They keep the colony alive. What will happen if we kill all the babies between 1 month and 5 years? Eventually there will be a population gap. Continue doing this for 5 or 10 years. What do we have? Old people die, and there are no young people to continue the human species.

The same happens in the case of the seals. People have been killing seal pups since as early as 1940. Recent years, the quota seal pups allowed to be killed we not even nearly met. This is because there are no more seal pups to be killed. Eventually the whole seal community is going to die out. Do we really want this? Do we want to tell our grand children one day that there are no more Cape Fur seals because we have been killing all the pups in the colonies?

The seal population has decreased dramatically during the past few years. In fact, 98% of the endemic offshore breeding islands have been abandoned. The only main colonies are found on six mainland colonies of which five is located in Namibia. 23 Island colonies had become extinct, and the seal population have only recolonised 3 of them.

The cruelty of the matter is not publically known. At cape cross, which is a major tourist attraction point in Namibia as well as a main breeding ground for the Cape Fur seal, unimaginable horrors is taking place. Cullers are arriving between 6-9 am to club seal pups and bulls. The carcasses are removed and cleaned up before 10 am when the tourists are arriving to observe the wonderful seals. They are unaware of the massacre that took place merely an hour ago.

Another thing is that when we do a bit of effort, the income we can get from tourists to visit and observe the seals is far more than what we will ever get from exporting more fish. Eventually the fish will also start to get less. The thing is to focus generating income on aspects that is ongoing. Tourists will never get extinct. We can tap their resources. There will always be tourists wanting to visit Namibia to observe the seals. Rather tap this source of income than tap the current source of income which will become extinct in due course.

On occasion, photographers arrived trying to obtain footage of the cruelty happening right under our noses. These photographers were not just beaten up the clubbers; they have also been arrested by the police. How is this possible? Why is this happening? Namibia is a country famous for its beautiful wild-life. How can we allow such cruelty to take place in our magnificent country?

The government argues that the seals are consuming too much fish, which could have otherwise be caught and exported. Therefore they are allowing 6 000 bulls and 80 000 pups to be killed. In reality, the pups killed are still nursing. So these pups do not catch fish yet. They are not contributing to the fish decline. They are still suckling on their mother’s milk.

What the people is not realizing is that the bulls are required to continue the existence of the species. They have to mate with females in order to allow new pups to be born. Now we are killing the pups by thousands. Not only will there sooner or later be no more bulls to mate, but there will also be no young females to mate with. The seal population will come to an abrupt halt and eventually become extinct is drastic action is not taken.

“Bonus time” for the Namibian economy as the annual seal hunts begins.

The Namibian economy is about to receive its annual bonus as the seal hunt begins 1st July. The hunt continues until the end of November.

The annual income from the seal hunt is worth more than N$ 600 000.00 to the Namibian economy. This is more than USD $ 100 000.00. This extra income is of great value to the Namibian economy as we are still a developing country.

The annual seal hunt is not just a boost to our economy. It gives our economy a boost in the sense that it is a way of acquiring an income for hundreds of people. Namibia has a great problem with unemployment. Giving the citizens of the country the opportunity to hunt seals for an income is a good way to decrease our unemployment rate.

During the hunt, Namibia provides jobs for more than 150 people. Compared to a state like South Africa and the US, this is a few people. But for Namibia it is quite a number. 150 People now have a job for which they receive an income and are able to increase their standard of living. That is the first great advantage of the annual seal hunt.

Another benefit of the seal hunt is that the number of seals is reduced in our ocean. This allows for our quota of fish to be caught to be increased. Fish is the primary source of food for seals. They consume more than 900 000 tons of fish a year. Reducing the seal population will increase our fish populations. This will enable us to increase our fishing quota. Increasing our fishing quota will force companies to employ more people which will again in turn decrease our unemployment rate in the country.

Decreasing the unemployment rate in a county will automatically increase the overall standard of living, which in turns improves the status of the county. The seal hunt only provides jobs from July until November. People employed at fishing companies have a more stable job.

The income from seal products amounts only to more than N$ 600 000.00. If we are able to increase our fishing quotas, we will be able to increase our income by much more. Fish products are exported to more countries than seal products due to the fact that most countries have implied a ban on seal products because they see the seal hunt as cruel and inhumane.

It is not a matter that we are wasting. We are not just exporting the skins and throwing the meat away. We are making use of the whole seal. Even the sex organs are exported. The meat of the seal is exported as well as the skin. The sex organs are exported to the Far East where they are used for traditional medicine; so even that is used.

An argument laid by the Seal Alert was that it is brutal to club the seals to death. Isn’t it also brutal to kill wild-life just for the trophy? Hunting a kudu or gemsbok just for the horns ends in the meat being wasted. Many hunting tourists shoot the poor animal so full of holes that the meat is hardly suitable to be sold in a butchery or supermarket. At least in the case of our seal hunting we are using the whole animal. We are keeping the meat nice and suitable. Clubbing allows only a hit on the head and a stake in the heart. The animal doesn’t suffer as in the case of trophy hunters.

Yes, it is brutal to kill a pup. Think of the money that pup is bringing to our economy. The pelt of that pup is worth quite a lot. It is not a matter that we are threatening the existence of the species. We have strict regulations in place to control the hunt to allow the species to continue. We just keep the population under control. The main enemy of the seal is the shark and killer whale. As these creatures are not too common in our waters, the seal population tends to get out of hand and certain precautions have to be taken.

Yes, the number of seals has drastically decreased over the last few years. Still it is controlled and monitored. We don’t want seals to go extinct as we realize their importance in the food chain as well as their contribution to income from tourism. We just want to control them in order to be for them to be most profitable to Namibia’s economy.

Tourisms provide quite a good income to our county, especially since we have the wide variety of wild-life to be observed. We don’t want to make seals extinct. Tourists will still be able to visit Namibia and observe the seals, but it will be controlled. Instead we can focus tourism on wild-life that is not a threat of some sort to our income, in the sense that the seals are a threat to our fishing income. We can rather concentrate on opening game farms where tourists will be able to observe a wider variety of animals more easily. The tourists will still be able to observe seals at Cape Cross and along the coast.