Seals On Cape Cod Are More Than Just Shark Bait

A gray seal haul out near Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro. (Miriam Wasser/WBUR)

There are tens of thousands of seals on Cape Cod and the Islands, and everyone seems to have an opinion about them. Some see them as an adorable tourist attraction that helps the ecosystem. But to others, they’re Public Enemy No. 1 — a messy, fish-eating shark magnet that needs to be culled.

Chatham-based commercial fisherman Nick Muto is one of the latter.

Seals used to be a thing that we didn’t see,” he says. “[Now] I see them every day on the water. I spend probably 200 days a year on the water, and the amount of seals that we see — it’s mind-blowing that people can’t identify that we have a species that is out of control here.”

He says fishermen see the seals as “totally protected eating machines.”

“They’ve destroyed a lot of the inshore fish populations,” he says. “They’ve become a real nuisance to people, fishermen. They’ve attracted the sharks. And they’re also polluting the waters.”

The seals do attract sharks, but are they out of control? That’s a tricky question.

Read the rest of the story at WBUR’s website.