Thank you.
It is a main principle in Norwegian management of seals and whales that no stock can be hunted without updated information about abundance.
The walrus has been protected in our area since 1952, while ringed seals, bearded seals, harbour seals and grey seals are hunted in a very small game hunt. Norwegian commercial sealing has always been based on harp seals in the Greenland Sea and the southeastern Barents Sea and on hooded seals in the Greenland Sea.
Results from the most recent pup survey in 2022 suggest that current Greenland Sea hooded seal pup production remains at a very low level, which is now less than 10% of the level in 1946. Following the implemented precautionary harvest strategy, the advice suggests that no harvest be allowed. This stock has been protected since 2007.
The 2022 pup production estimate for Greenland Sea harp seals is similar to previous survey estimates from 1991 to 2018, and the stock probably counts some 500,000 to 600,000 animals. It is still harvested commercially at a very low scale. From numbers taken in 2022, there were only 1,400 animals.
Recent Russian aerial surveys of the White Sea and Barents Sea harp seal stock suggest that there may have been a sudden reduction in pup production after 2003. Nevertheless, the stock still counts around 1.5 million animals, and there is a current small Norwegian hunt. The Russians haven't hunted in this area since 2008.
It is well known that the population dynamics of harp seals have been influenced by commercial hunts, which resulted in significant declines after World War II. However, lower catches and improved management have lessened the influence of hunting. Today, the removals in the west and east ice areas where we hunt are way below the scientific advice for sustainable harvest.
In a recent study of prey consumption by the marine mammal community in our areas—that means both seals and whales—we assessed that marine mammals remove an annual amount of 25 million tonnes of prey per year. As a comparison, the removal by fisheries is only a little over four million tonnes per year in the same areas.
Along with cod and minke whales, harp seals are the main top predators in the Barents Sea ecosystem. In the decade leading up to 2015, the abundance of cod increased to record high levels. In spite of this, the growth and condition of individual cod have remained rather stable. However, the body condition—the blubber thickness—of harp seals and minke whales has decreased. A possible hypothesis for explaining this is that cod in fact outperform marine mammal stocks in the competition for food in our area.
Finally, climate change is a challenge for several pinniped populations. With the assumed and observed reductions in ice cover, pagophilic seal species such as harp and hooded seals will experience marked breeding habitat loss in traditional breeding areas and will certainly undergo distributional changes and presumably also abundance reductions, with subsequent consequences for traditional harvest.
Thank you.