Human Interactions
This species is an inquisitive and friendly animal when in the water, and will often accompany SCUBA divers. They will swim around divers for periods of several minutes at a time, even at a depth of 60m. On land, they are far less relaxed and tend to panic when people come near them.
Australian fur seals were hunted intensively between 1798 and 1825 for commercial reasons. Seal hunting stopped in Australia in 1923, and their population is still recovering. Breeding and haul-out sites are protected by law. South African fur seals have a very robust and healthy population. Harvesting of seals was outlawed in South Africa in 1990.
Brown fur seals are still harvested in Namibia. Around 85,000 pups a year are clubbed to death; their fur is bought by Turkish businessman Hatem Yavuz, and sold to the fashion industry. Many animal activist groups strongly condemn this culling. The seal is a protected species in South Africa; there are now only a million seals in the wild. The quota set by the Namibian government for culling the pups, until 2019, will be a million pups.
Read more about this topic: Brown Fur Seal
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or interactions:
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—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
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