Claim fish farmers are behind secret seal slaughter

The Seal Protection Action Group told the BBC's Countryfile programme that as many as 5,000 of the mammals are shot in Scotland every year.

The salmon farming industry dispute the figure, and say shooting seals is necessary to protect stocks. It is currently legal to shoot seals outside their breeding season.

Common seal numbers have plummeted by a third in Britain over the past seven years, with ecological changes and a shortage of wild fish generally thought to be behind the drop, BBC News said in a report about the programme.

Andy Ottaway, of the Seal Protection Action Group, told BBC he believed the shooting of seals was another major factor behind the animal's decline, and claimed there is a mass slaughter of seal in Scotland –with up to 5000 being killed each year. He said the decline in seal numbers was particularly noticeable in the areas surrounding fish farms.

"Scientifically we don't know the real reason behind the total decline, but what we do know is that when they are situated near a fish farm then there is a decline and shooting is probably one of the main reasons," he told Countryfile.

However, Scott Landsburgh of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation pointed out that a single seal attack could kill several thousand farmed salmon, and showed the programme pictures of the aftermath of one recent salmon attack where up to 1,000 salmon were killed.

 He said: "We all like seals, we all want to protect the seals, but our paramount responsibility is the welfare of the salmon,"

"Let me put this in perspective - we had 30,000 seal attacks on Scottish salmon farms last year. Our industry has reported to us that 489 seals were shot by the salmon industry."