Lenie ’t Hart makes an urgent plea to the ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality to put an immediate ban on research institute IMARES’ plans to conduct tests on dozens of seals in the eastern Wadden Sea area and the Dollard.
From September this year, IMARES wants to catch dozens of seals every year between 2009 and 2014 in the eastern Wadden Sea area and the Dollard, in order to glue a transmitter to their heads before releasing them again. During a previous test a seal with a transmitter on its head was found dead in Vlieland. The animal had starved to death.
The transmitter, comparable to if swimmer Marleen Veldhuis were wearing a small shoebox between her shoulder blades, is meant to provide information about the movements of the seal. However, with the transmitter, the seals are no longer able to catch food in a normal manner, which may lead to starvation. A transmitter on their head causes unnatural behaviour which, therefore, result in unreliable results from these animal tests.
The Dutch-German research institute FlowMotion (Delft/Weener) has been commissioned by the SRRC to carry out research to see what effects the transmitters have when they are used in the way IMARES uses them. This research showed that a substantial disruption of the water flow takes place, making it difficult for a seal to dive, causing it to use much more energy and disabling it to catch fish properly. A scientific publication by the SRRC’s biologists will soon appear in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.
IMARES’ research must be carried out for the ministry to determine the effects of sinking piles and other building activities for the supposed building of energy plants there. The SRRC has learned from its own research as well as continual observation that such activities shall have no detrimental effect on the seals there and that no animal tests in order to determine that will not be necessary.
The great disruption of catching the animals (casting nets amidst large groups of seals), the animal suffering that is inflicted by fixing the seals up (the transmitter must be attached to dry fur and the glue takes time to dry; the development of heat sometimes causes burns) and the problems with which the transmittered animals are saddled up, form a much greater problem for the seals than the building activities in the Eemshaven.
09-14-2009 Source: SRRC Lenie 't Hart
