Capelinks.com: Too Many Seals, Not Enough Sharks

It appears that The Hairy Beast’s musings on the relationship between an exploding New England seal population and the unusual appearance of a great white shark fifty feet off a Cape Cod beach last month (Cape Cod Massachusetts: Too many seals and Great Whites, now!) has prompted some explication from Capelinks.com.

In the post Too Many Seals, Not Enough Sharks, Capelinks says

I would imagine since both sharks and seals are now protected that their populations are growing happily together.

If a shark can smell drops of blood several miles away, how far away can it smell ten thousand pounds of seal poop?

Interesting segue. Seal poop? What does that have to do with anything?

The seal population here is an issue for a number of reasons, the least of which is the shark population. With the seals now covering large areas of the outer beaches, one concern is pollution from seal waste. I have heard from boaters and fishermen that you can smell the seals from pretty far offshore when the breeze is right, or “ripe”. All these seals doing their business all over miles of shoreline cannot be very good for swimmers. Don’t drink the water… it’s too salty. wink

Aha! So more seals means more seal doo-doo, more sharks and more pollution. Not good.

The Hairy Beasts commends this well-reasoned and entertaining piece to his readers. In his original post he focused on the shark attack because it was spectacular. Pollution and fish depletion are not as “news-sexy” as great whites feeding in bathing areas, but he now understands they are of far more immediate concern.

Still, more great whites flapping around in these waters – eating seals or not – doesn’t sound like a great solution either.