| Summary: | • For the past six years, nearly 400,000 harp seals from the Northwest Atlantic population have been hunted annually by Canada and Greenland, the highest number since the 1950s. When such hunting pressure last occurred, the harp seal population declined rapidly by over 50%. With current levels of hunting pressure being so high, it is important to have accurate information about the total harp seal population size and the subsequent effects of differing hunting strategies. Therefore, in this report we evaluate the scientific model used by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans to estimate harp seal population size, set harp seal total allowable catches (TACs) and model the effect of different culling pressure. • Two aspects make the Canadian harp seal population model unsafe: (i) it assumes that many variables such as the environment and food availability play no part in determining numbers of harp seals; and (ii) it assumes that all the input variables into the model are accurate. • Significantly, the model fails to take into account many variables that can affect harp seal numbers. These include environment unpredictability, climate change and the
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