Few Pups Seen on Canada Opening Day Seal Hunt

Few Pups Seen on Canada Opening Day Seal Hunt



   
April 2007 - Climate change has turned the ice in Canada's Southern 
Gulf of St. Lawrence to slush weeks earlier than usual, so few 
young seals were to be seen as the annual Canadian harp seal 
hunt opened today. Mother seals could not climb onto solid ice 
to give birth and so were forced to give birth at sea, where 
thousands of pups have drowned. 
Even if they did survive their birth, newborn seals cannot 
swim in their first few weeks of life and need a foothold of 
solid ice, so thousands more pups perished in the icy slush. 
Conservationists pleaded with the Canadian Department of 
Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, to call a halt to this year's seal 
hunt, but despite concern expressed about the softening ice, 
the hunt opened on schedule today. 
The 2007 harp seal total allowable catch has been set at 
270,000, Loyola Hearn, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, 
announced on Saturday. That is down from the 2006 quota of 
325,000, and about the same as the quota set from 1997 to 
2002. Minister of Fisheries Loyola Hearn is a member of Parliament 
who represents Newfoundland and Labrador. 
"Although ice conditions have deteriorated in the Southern 
Gulf of St. Lawrence this spring," said Hearn, "conditions 
remain good where the majority of seals are located, which is 
in the Northern Gulf and on the Front, off the northeast coast 
of Newfoundland and Labrador." 
The seal hunt in the northern Gulf begins on Wednesday, and 
the DFO has yet to announce a date for the start of the hunt 
on Labrador Front. 
"We've noticed that the ice over the past four or five years 
has been deteriorating and this year it's giving us some 
concern," said DFO spokesman Phil Jenkins. "We're seeing poor 
ice conditions. So, we can expect a higher than average 
mortality of seal pups." 
The Canadian government refused to issue any observation 
permits to international journalists, scientists, and 
observers for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence hunt. 
"Canada's cruel baby seal slaughter started this morning and, 
for the first time in nine years, I have been denied access to 
the opening day of the hunt," said Rebecca Aldworth, director 
of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the 
United States. Aldworth grew up in Newfoundland and has been a 
longtime observer of the Canadian seal hunt. 
Observers with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, 
IFAW, traveled by plane and helicopter and observed a single 
sealing vessel as it began hunting seals on the opening day of 
the Gulf hunt. 
They said sealers were shooting at seals on small ice pans 
from their boat. "What we saw today was the cruelty of 
shooting seals in open water," said Sheryl Fink, observer and 
senior researcher with IFAW. "A recent veterinary panel 
recommended banning the practice of shooting seals in open 
water, and today we saw why." 
"Seals were seen in agony after being shot at and injured, but 
not instantly killed. One seal was hauled alive onto the deck 
of the boat with a steel hook before finally being beaten to 
death," Fink said. 
"The conditions this year are disastrous," said Fink. "I've 
surveyed this region for six years and I haven't seen anything 
like this. "There is wide open water and almost no seals. I 
only saw a handful of adult harp seals and even fewer pups, 
where normally we should be seeing thousands and thousands of 
seals." 
Seal swims through icy slush in the southern Gulf of St. 
Lawrence 
"Even Canadian government scientists are estimating up to 100 
percent of the pups born in the southern Gulf died because of 
the lack of ice," said Aldworth. "It is reprehenvironment newsible that the 
Canadian government would allow sealers to kill the few 
surviving pups." 
"These decisions are guided by principles of conservation," 
said Minister Hearn, who says the Atlantic harp seal 
population is plentiful - nearly triple what it was in the 
1970s. The current Canadian government estimate of harp seals 
is about 5.5 million animals. 
"I also want to environment newsure that the people who depend on this 
resource for their livelihood will benefit from it over the 
long-term," said Hearn, defending the catch quota of 270,000. 
"This year's decision takes into account the poor ice 
conditions we've seen in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence." 
Conservationists are not alone in raising their voices against 
Canada's commercial seal hunt - the largest slaughter of 
marine mammals in the world. 
In the U.S. Senate on March 21, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan 
Democrat, introduced a resolution that urges the government of 
Canada to end what the senator called "this senseless and 
inhumane slaughter." 
"It makes little sense to continue this inhumane industry that 
employs only a few hundred people on a seasonal, part-time 
basis and only operates for a few weeks a year, in which the 
concentrated killings takes place," Senator Levin told his 
colleagues. "In Newfoundland, where over 90 percent of the 
hunters live, the economic contribution of the seal hunt is 
marginal. In fact, exports of seal products from Newfoundland 
account for less than one-tenth of one percent of the 
province's total exports." 
He was joined in submitting the anti-seal hunt resolution by 
Senator Joseph Biden, a Maryland Democrat, and Senator Susan 
Collins, a Maine Republican. 
The Canadian Sealers Association says that the harp seal 
population is healthy and abundant and has nearly tripled in 
size in 35 years. By comparison, it was 1.8 million in 1970. 
Sealers need the money, the association says, and each seal 
pelt is selling for a top price of C$65. 
Journalist Jim Winter, who is also the founding president of 
the Canadian Sealers' Association, defends the annual seal 
hunt and attacks animal conservation groups. 
"It's now four decades since animal rights groups started 
their anti-sealing campaigns in Canada that have raised for 
them hundreds of million of dollars," Winter writes on the 
Canadian Sealers Association website. "During this time 
Canadian sealers have taken their yearly quotas while more 
than doubling the population of the harp seal herd to over 
five million animals." 
He argues that sealing is not a conservation issue because 
harp seals are not a threatened or endangered species. 
Canadian sealer hooks a harp seal today amidst melting ice 
pans. 
"The killing - while not pretty - is simply an outdoor 
abattoir and it is as efficient and as humane as any abattoir 
in the western world," Winter writes. 
He says the sealers need income from the annual hunt to 
survive. "Canadian sealers are rural people earning a living 
from the sea," he writes. "Like all rural peoples - whether 
fishermen or farmers - they do not have salaries." 
"Sealers use as much of the animal as possible to produce a 
range of products. They range from food and clothing to 
medicines, artisan art and souvenirs. The animals sealers kill 
have the skin, fat, flippers [meat] and some carcasses 
prepared and stored on the boat," writes Winter. 
"Remaining parts of the carcass are left on the ice, which 
melts to return the remains to the sea where it becomes food 
for fish and crustaceans. This avoids the land-based abattoir 
problem of disposing of offal produced by animal slaughter. 
What could be more 'green'? What could be more ecofriendly?" 
But Winter does not address the issue of climate change, the 
miles of open water instead of solid ice, the thousands of 
pups drowned. 
Conservationists believe that deteriorating ice conditions may 
make a continuation of the seal hunt impossible. "There are so 
few pups left," said IFAW's Fink, "and here the sealers were 
wiping out the last few survivors." 

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