Changing federal legislation to allow killing of seals and great whites is gaining some public favor but little traction elsewhere.

WELLFLEET — In the wake of bodyboarder Arthur Medici’s death last month after being attacked by a great white shark, County Commissioner Ron Beaty renewed his call for a cull of white sharks, requesting the formation of a task force to “fully and completely address the Cape Cod shark problem.”

Last year, Beaty called for the use of drum lines — baited hooks attached to large buoys — to catch and kill great white sharks that approach beaches. At that time, you could hardly find a voice in support. His proposal was roundly condemned and resulted in an 800-signature petition this spring seeking a recall vote.

But in the month since Medici’s death, the idea of killing our way out of the problem has garnered some local support.

“We need to remove those white sharks who threaten the lives and safety of the people who use our beaches on the Outer Cape,” said summer resident Laurie Voke at a September meeting in Wellfleet attended by hundreds.

At a memorial paddle in Wellfleet last week, Medici’s aunt Marisa Medici asked for government action to prevent further attacks.

“I don’t think we need to protect these animals anymore,” she said. “I think the population is too much now.”

Surfer Charles “Chick” Frodigh wanted to fight back to restore the safety of the beach. Like many Cape Cod surfers, he learned how to deal with the known risks — large punishing surf, cold water, rip currents, drowning. But Medici’s death, along with a shark attack Aug. 15 on a swimmer in Truro, marked a change in how many viewed the ocean they loved.

In "the last eight years it has become more of a nightmare that has culminated in the death of a precious human being,” Frodigh wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to state and county officials, saying Cape Cod has become a modern-day "Jurassic Park."

“It’s time to think about which is more important. Are people more important than the sharks and the seals? In my mind I would have every seal killed to not have another Sept. 15 (the date Medici died),” Frodigh said last Saturday after emerging from the water following the paddle-out.

“We never had to deal with this before,” said Wellfleet surfer John Kartsounis. He and others want to amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow killing of seals for public safety reasons and would like to change fishery regulations to reduce great white shark numbers as well.

“I think, first and foremost, the job of our elected officials is to promote the health and safety of the public and I think we’ve lost track of that,” Kartsounis said. “We need to allow recreational and commercial fishermen to do what needs to be done.”

Legal cull unlikely

From a legal perspective, the chance for a cull of seals and/or white sharks being permitted by the federal government is exceedingly slim. Scientifically, there is little evidence to show that lethal tactics work. Proposed culls of either species would be vigorously opposed by the animals rights groups and tend to run counter to what the general public, both locals and the visitors who drive our economy, believe in, experts said.

The seals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which prohibits the hunting, harassing or killing of marine mammals on U.S. soil and territorial waters, and even in international waters if the person is a U.S. citizen. Unlike the Endangered Species Act, there is no population goal that removes protections because the ecosystem imposes its own limits through prey availability, predation and disease.

But there are some fairly narrow exceptions to the law. Fishermen are limited to a specific number they can inadvertently kill while fishing. One permit was recently granted to kill a very small number of individual sea lions in the Northwest that were eating endangered salmon species. A bill that passed the House of Representatives this summer expanded on that number, allowing for up to 920 California sea lions and seals to be killed on two rivers in Oregon because they were eating endangered salmon.

Although some pointed to this exception as an example of a way to amend the mammal protection act, NOAA officials said it would not apply to the situation on Cape Cod because it is specifically connected to safeguarding an endangered species.

“This provision does not allow the culling of an entire population,” NOAA Fisheries officials wrote in an email, pointing out that in the 46 years of the Marine Mammal Protection Act there has never been an authorized culling related to shark attacks on seals or sea lions.

A second impediment is that most of the shoreline out to a quarter-mile falls within the boundaries of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Park Superintendent Brian Carlstrom said the “likelihood of any culling within the National Seashore is very remote.”

Although the National Park system does do lethal removals of species — including proposed coyote and crow killing locally to protect the endangered piping plover — there has to be an overall benefit to the local ecosystem, Carlstrom said.

“We don’t have the level of research on that to begin a seal cull at this point,” he said.

Exact seal population unknown

Cull advocates point to harvests on the order of tens of thousands of seals to address the problem, but without knowing the actual number of gray seals in our area, it’s hard to know what amount is needed.

Sean Hayes, NOAA’s chief of protected species in the Northeast, said the winter breeding population is estimated at 27,000. But estimates have ranged upward of 50,000 based on a small sample tagging study that calculated the percentage of seals in the water compared with those on land.

Even so, the influx of seals from Canada would likely offset any culling program. Tagging and branding studies have shown a significant percentage come from Canada each year, where there are as many as 500,000 gray seals.

“A significant portion of our summer population is composed of some portion of the half million from Canada,” Hayes said. “It’s one reason why a cull or amendment to the MMPA probably wouldn’t be that effective.”

Although fishermen have long said the seals are affecting the recovery of cod and other commercial fish species, Hayes said the evidence is inconclusive. Canadian scientists have estimated that cod may account for as much as 50 percent of seal diet in some areas, but Hayes said the research is ongoing about where and what gray seals are eating locally.

“Most of the diet studies show seals eating small fish,” said Hayes. “They don’t spend a lot of time chasing big fish.”

A big hurdle for any culling proposal to overcome would be public opposition. The Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972 in large part due to public sentiment that killing intelligent mammalian species was wrong.

“These are charismatic megafauna,” said Sharon Young, marine issues field director for the U.S. Humane Society. “Porpoises, dolphins, are intelligent, and seals look like dogs. It really captured the imagination of the people and the desire to protect these animals.”

Even locally, the support for extreme measures appears limited. In response to a concerted campaign by the Seal Abatement Coalition, a Nantucket group of recreational fishermen and others lobbying for changes to the MMPA to curb the population, Jennifer Jackman, an associate professor of political science at Salem State University, led a team that surveyed 350 Nantucket voters, an equal number of visitors, and 125 recreational anglers. In all groups, there was a lack of enthusiasm for lethal management of the gray seals, she said.

“There was more support for nonlethal, but significant support for leaving them alone,” said Jackman, who said support for the Marine Mammal Protection Act was well over two-thirds majority across all three groups.

She said surveys showed people are less supportive of hunts in which meat or other products of the hunt are not used.

Even in Canada, which has legal hunts for both gray and harp seals, the inclination to kill them has diminished as both the U.S., under the MMPA, and the European Union have bans on importing seal products. Despite a determination by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada that gray seals may be harming the recovery of cod stocks in areas like the St. Lawrence River, and proposals to cull tens of thousands to help that effort, the DFO has no plans for a cull. Less than 1,000 sealers were active out of the nearly 10,000 permits and only around 1,612 gray seals were taken in 2016.

Little popular support

Given that there were widespread protests on the Cape and in Massachusetts against the proposed killing of crows, coyotes and other predators affecting the survival of plovers, there may be little popular support for a seal cull, said experts.

“There is a local public outcry related to human safety, but the national will to change the course of (the MMPA)? There’s not a lot of appetite to do that,” said Hayes.

“I’m not hearing anyone with gravitas in terms of science or animal behavior saying do a cull,” said Mark Faherty, science coordinator at Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. Plus, the largest colony of gray seals in the U.S. is located within the boundaries of the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. While hunting is permitted in national refuges, you need a permit.

“I don’t think Monomoy is going to say, come down and slaughter the seals,” Faherty said.

Faherty and others believe the negative publicity generated by the intentional killing of seals and sharks would do a lot more damage to Cape tourism than shark attacks.

“Are we the slaughter-the-seals place or a place with a tiny, tiny risk of shark attacks?” he asked.

Any proposed killing of sharks or seals would also face stiff opposition from environmental organizations.

“I think almost all (environmental) groups would oppose a cull,” Young said.

Great white sharks may not be as cuddly or elicit the same level of sympathy with the general public as seals, but they are protected by regulations that are evidence of a strong national and international conservation movement.

Although fishermen can catch them recreationally in federal waters from 3 miles out to 200 miles, federal and state regulations prohibit possession, selling or purchasing white sharks. Massachusetts regulations also prohibit the use of bait or chum to attract great whites in state waters.

And the effectiveness of shark eradication efforts is not supported by the science, shark researchers say.

Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at the University of California Long Beach, said shark culls following attacks are largely symbolic in the short run. He researched Hawaii’s long history of shark culls in response to attacks and found there was no statistical difference in bite statistics even after removing 5,000 sharks a year.

“There is evidence that long-term culling works, but you have to do it for decades,” he said. It’s expensive and takes a high toll on other marine life like whales, dolphins and birds that get entangled in nets.

A 2017 report from New South Wales on a beach protection program using nets and drum lines on the east coast of Australia showed that the shark nets caught two bull sharks and 143 animals that were not targeted. Eighty-six of those animals were released alive. SMART drum lines — which send signals to shore when an animal is caught — hooked 32 animals, only half of which were targeted species, including nine great whites, three bull sharks, and four tiger sharks. All of those sharks were removed from the hooks and released alive farther offshore because crews responded quickly to the signal from the buoys.

The program cost an estimated $1.4 million for eight months for beaches within a 100-mile stretch of coastline.

Permitting along the Cape's coastline would be difficult since the region already has entanglement issues with the endangered right whale. The focus in fishery management is on removing vertical fishing lines from the water, not adding them.

Plus nets and drum lines don’t offer blanket protection. Some sharks will escape nets and hooks and move into territories vacated by those caught and removed.

State Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist Gregory Skomal argued that the great white sharks have ecosystem benefits that are often overlooked.

“If you want to control seal populations in a natural way, that is the job of the white sharks,” he said. While the numbers are still being crunched, Skomal said it is looking like the Cape is on a par with other shark hot spots in the world with 1,000 great whites entering local waters each spring through fall “not out of the realm of possibility.”

“The upward projection we see has shown no sign of slowing,” he said. Just how many seals they eat is one of the goals of a five-year population study that wraps up this year.

Andrea Bogolmoni, the director of the Northwest Atlantic Seal Research Consortium in Woods Hole, also thought the environmental benefits of robust populations of seals and sharks were not being factored into the conversation. Research has shown that seals, whales and other deep-diving creatures bring nutrients from the deep water where they hunt their prey to the upper regions where they defecate and help feed plankton blooms. They also help in re-establishing a balance in the food web, providing a benefit to commercial fishermen by preying on species that eat predators of valuable commercial species like cod and lobster.

“In areas we depend on for high productivity, whales and seals are there,” Bogolmoni said.

“We need to get back to where we were four generations before,” she said. “Part of a measure of success is that we are bringing these animals back.”

— Follow Doug Fraser on Twitter: @DougFraserCCT.