This in turn has led to an increase in the numbers of small-scale fishermen in the provinces of Maldonado and Rocha, along the Atlantic Ocean. The government used to allow a controlled yearly slaughter of sea lions, prized for their hide and blubber. The new body stopped the culling in 1991, apparently on the grounds that it did not have enough money. In these six years, Uruguay's sea lions have thrived as a tourist attraction, that is, until January of this year, when fishermen asked to restart the hunting of the animals. This has triggered off a heated debate between scientists, traders, the fishing community and ecologists.
Fishermen complain that sea lions destroy their nets and steal their catch.
They say only a small group of sea lions feed near the coast. But this group belongs to the threatened single-hair species, which numbers only about 16,000 to 20,000 in Uruguay. Far more populous are the two-hair species, distinguishable by their mane, of which there are some 270,000. These feed far from the coast and on fish that are not caught by fishermen. He blames human activity such as large-scale industrial fishing and pollution that is caused by city sewers.