Nearly 15,000 seals have been drawn to the beaches of Cape Cod, sunning themselves on the New England shores.
Aerial pictures of the coast show the sea mammals covering the area in brown.
Though once rarely seen at Cape Cod, their population has been booming due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
However, NPR reports that the seal population explosion has also led to shark infiltration.
As an April Fool's joke, Cape Cod Today wrote a blog post on the issue, stating that Barnstable
County would reward each seal brought to the county sheriff's office with a $20 bounty.
The satirical post argued that fish can be hurt by the extra competition for food, seals hurt fishermen by going after the same prey, and the mammals also harm the area's shellfish industry.
The blog also noted that seals draw great white sharks and a single shark attack could grievously harm tourism.
Though only a joke, The Huffington Post noted that the blog was an expression of some real concerns bothering Cape Cod residents.
A similar explosion of seal caused tensions last year, with some Cape Cod fishermen wondering how much protection the species still needed.
'It's like having 15,000 unregulated fishermen, do-what-you-want fishermen out there,' Chatham fisherman John Our, who worked as a commercial fisherman for 32 years, told the Cape Cod Times in 2012.
'This summer, they have been very aggressive,' he said. 'They can eat up 3,000 pound of skates overnight.'
They also easily destroyed expensive fishing equipment and nets.
As this year's invasion presents many of the same problems, experts say they're still uncertain how to deal with the issue.
Aerial pictures of the coast show the sea mammals covering the area in brown.
Though once rarely seen at Cape Cod, their population has been booming due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
Seals carpeted a beach at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge as the population booms
The most recent estimates say nearly 15,000 seals are sunning themselves on New England beaches
As an April Fool's joke, Cape Cod Today wrote a blog post on the issue, stating that Barnstable
THE GRAY SEALS OF CAPE COD WENT FROM ALMOST VANISHING TO BEING SO NUMEROUS THEY'RE A PUBLIC NUISANCE
The
gray seal population was almost wiped out in New England by the late
1960s. Then the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 became law,
forbidding the harassment or harming of all marine mammals. Soon the
gray seal population, which was the region's largest seal population,
began to recover. Around Cape Cod, the estimated population went from
5,611 in 1999 to 15,756 in 2011. Now some argue the population has
actually become too large, hurting the fishing industry and attracting
sharks to the area as well as harming the water quality.
The satirical post argued that fish can be hurt by the extra competition for food, seals hurt fishermen by going after the same prey, and the mammals also harm the area's shellfish industry.
The blog also noted that seals draw great white sharks and a single shark attack could grievously harm tourism.
Though only a joke, The Huffington Post noted that the blog was an expression of some real concerns bothering Cape Cod residents.
A similar explosion of seal caused tensions last year, with some Cape Cod fishermen wondering how much protection the species still needed.
'It's like having 15,000 unregulated fishermen, do-what-you-want fishermen out there,' Chatham fisherman John Our, who worked as a commercial fisherman for 32 years, told the Cape Cod Times in 2012.
'This summer, they have been very aggressive,' he said. 'They can eat up 3,000 pound of skates overnight.'
They also easily destroyed expensive fishing equipment and nets.
As this year's invasion presents many of the same problems, experts say they're still uncertain how to deal with the issue.
NPR reported the massive number of seals has attracted more sharks to the area
The seals have irritated some residents, with a
satirical article even claiming the local sheriff had a $20 bounty on
their heads
'We are trying to influence policymakers when we
don't have the research. There is no money to do the research,' Bob
Prescott, the director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Wellfleet
Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, told the Cape Cod Times.
It was still uncertain how large the population would get and what they would eat.
'The science
has not been all that good for seals,' noted Greg Early of the Northwest
Atlantic Seal Research Consortium. 'They spend 80 to 90 percent of their
lives in water, and we are hampered by that.'