The federal government is hosting a Seal Summit in St. John’s this week to discuss product development and market innovation with various stakeholders.

Seal populations off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador have exploded with many in the fishing industry pointing to seal predation as one of the factors hindering cod recovery.

As of last week, the location of the two-day summit still had not been released to media.

Association of Seafood Producers Executive Director, Derek Butler, is one of a number of industry representatives attending the summit. He’s hoping to hear what will be proposed in terms of the impact of the abundance of seals on fish populations.

He says ecosystems must be in balance and “something is wrong.” “We don’t have balance with an aggressive and substantial seal population that is out of sorts, out of kilter, with the rest of the fisheries populations that we would like to prosecute commercially for food protein.”