THE EFFECT OF SEAL STOCKS ON SCOTTISH MARINE 



FISHERIES 



Bennet B. Rae 



Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen 



The first Grey Seals' Protection Act was passed in the spring of 1914. 

 Introducing the Bill, the promotor maintained that the grey seal was in 

 danger of becoming extinct and that stocks on the Scottish coast totalled no 

 more than 500. An examination of the available literature and documents 

 has failed to disclose the evidence on which these statements were based, 

 apart from a popular and emotional article by a well-known soldier, hunter 

 and sportsman of the day, H. H. Pritchard, pubhshed in the Cornhill Magazine 

 in July 191 3, in which attention was drawn to the traditional killing of grey 

 seals on a Hebridean island for domestic purposes. No scientific investigation 

 of the matter was undertaken at the time to ascertain whether the statements 

 were true and whether protection was necessary. In this connection it is 

 perhaps significant that in subsequent years, on different parts of the British 

 coast, seal colonies previously regarded as of common seals, have been 

 identified as of grey seals. No consideration appears to have been given to 

 the possible effect of seal protection on fish stocks, nor were its consequences 

 to the inhabitants of the Western Isles, the people most intimately affected, 

 taken into account. 



Fourteen years later, Professor J. Ritchie and Mr W. L. Calderwood 

 surveyed the Scottish grey seal stocks and estimated the total population at 

 between 4,000 and 5,000. Ritchie & Calderwood (1928) considered that, in 

 view of the growth of the stocks, the danger of extermination no longer 

 existed, but in spite of this the second Grey Seals' Protection Act was passed 

 in 1932 (protection having been continued in the intervening years under 

 the Expiring Laws Continuance Acts). In the face of some opposition from 

 salmon fishing interests the Bill was accepted, but mainly because it now 

 provided the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Agriculture 

 & Fisheries with power to make an order curtailing the protective measures 

 if the need should arise. In the years which followed, the grey seal continued 

 to increase in numbers, perhaps aided by the general concern of fishermen 

 with other matters during the second great war. 



