Does the Seal Licensing System in Scotland Have a Negative Impact on Seal Welfare?

Abstract

This study examined the licensing system that permits seal shooting in Scotland, which was established under Part 6 Conservation of Seals of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. Four approaches were used: data were collated and analyzed from both the Scottish Government and Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme; a survey was sent to current license holders and informal interviews were conducted with key stakeholder types. Between February 2011 and the end of October 2015, 1229 gray seals, and 275 common seals were reported shot under license to the Scottish Government. The numbers of seals reported as shot has reduced year-on-year since the licensing system was put in place. While some license holders, notably fish farms, were using some non-lethal forms of deterrent to reduce seal-related damage, these were often used alongside seal shooting. Of the seals reported as shot to the Scottish Government, only a small percentage were also reported to the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, despite this being a licensing requirement. Only 2.3% of the shot gray seals and 4.5% of the shot common seals were necropsied. There is evidence from these necropsies that some seals had not died instantly or had not been shot in the manner recommended by the Scottish Seal Management Code of Practice. These preliminary results show that more carcasses need to be recovered and necropsied if the welfare implications of current seal shooting practice are to be properly assessed. The current legislation does not specify closed seasons to protect breeding seals and 35% of necropsied seals were pregnant gray seals. Seals have also been shot during their lactation periods when pups are dependent on their mothers. This raises significant welfare concerns. The re-introduction of closed seasons specific to each species of seal is recommended along with greater effort to deploy non-lethal methods. Independent assessment of the number of seals being killed would also improve the credibility of the system.

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“…In the water, it is far harder to assess whether a shot seal has been wounded or whether it has been killed instantly. There have been cases of seals in Scotland not being killed by the first shot [41]. The EFSA Risk Assessment found that it is "very likely to likely" that shooting seals is an effective way to kill them and that suffering would be "negligible, especially if death was ensured by another method of killing" [30].…”

“…The authors of the EFSA report concluded that when seals are shot in locations where reaching the shot animal was difficult (e.g., in open deep water) then there was an unknown risk of causing unavoidable pain, distress and suffering [30]. As seals shot in management situations are rarely checked or the carcasses recovered then this may be a significant source of animal suffering in some fisheries/around some fish farms [41]. Nunny, Simmonds, and Butterworth report that there is no international standard for how seals should be shot and, therefore, it is possible that seals are being shot in circumstances that lead to suffering [3].…”

“…If this ineffective monitoring takes place in seal hunts when the sealer approaches the seal at close quarters to subsequently skin it, then it might also be considered unlikely that effective monitoring will take place in a management situation. The low number of seal carcasses that are collected by marksmen in Scotland suggests that in some places this is indeed the case [41].…”

“…Shooting is the most common method used for killing both terrestrial and marine predators. In some cases, animals are shot with firearms in conflict situations e.g., seal shooting in Scotland under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 to prevent serious damage to fisheries or fish farms [41]. In other circumstances, predators are killed as part of a regulated hunt and the carcass may be collected for use (e.g., bear hunting in Sweden) [42].…”

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“…However, the Code does not address how to check the state of consciousness of a shot seal nor does it specify what a "rapid death" is in terms of time to death. Nunny et al(2016) reported that some seals shot in Scotland did not die immediately.…”