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Seal Hunt Extends to Ice Floes |
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By Stephen Leahy *
Canada
will continue the annual killing of thousands of seals beginning
April 12 on ice floes off the Labrador Peninsula. Animal rights
activists are calling for a boycott of Canadian seafood.
BROOKLIN, Canada - The controversial commercial
seal hunt will extend as of Apr. 12 onto the ice floes south of
the Labrador Peninsula in Canada, as animal rights activists unanimously
protest the practice.
Nearly 100,000 baby seals have been clubbed and shot in the past
two weeks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the first part of the annual
commercial hunt that will harvest some 319,000 harp seals (Phoca
groenlandica), named for the harp-shaped pattern on the backs of
the adults.
On Apr. 12, the hunters will move out onto the desolate ice floes,
some 100 km out on the open sea, where they have not been since
the 1980s due to factors of distance and danger.
"There is unimaginable cruelty, with wounded seals drowning in their
own blood or being skinned alive," says Rebecca Aldworth, of the
U.S. Humane Society (USHS), which is calling for a boycott of all
Canadian seafood to protest the killing.
"This is the largest slaughter of marine animals in the world. There
is nothing else like it," Aldworth, a witness of this year's and
six previous hunts, told Tierramérica.
The young seals targeted in the hunt have been weaned and are between
12 and 90 days old. However, they remain on the ice near where they
are born until ready to begin hunting for their own food underwater.
The pups are hunted for their pelts, a short, flat waterproof fur.
The Canadian government considers the seal hunt a commercial exploitation
of a relatively abundant natural resource, like fish. In 2002 it
estimated there were about five million harp seals and set a three-year
harvest target of roughly 950,000 animals.
A new three-year plan is to be released later this year and is expected
to allow a similar numbers of seals to be harvested in the coming
years.
"Our goal is simple: to maintain a healthy, strong, sustainable
population for years to come," Geoff Regan, Canada's Minister of
Fisheries and Oceans, said in a statement.
Scientists from around the world and representatives from the International
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
are expected to review the government's data on seals and what constitutes
a sustainable population.
Canadian fisheries officials are widely thought to have mismanaged
fish stocks --the nearly extinct northern cod in particular -- but
their estimates of the seal populations seem to be correct, according
to Ransom Myers, fisheries biologist at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Myers told Tierramérica in an e-mail interview that he believes
this year's hunt is sustainable and that the controversy is an animal
rights issue, not a conservation issue.
Contrary to a widely held belief, the seal hunt has nothing to do
with assisting the recovery of the northern cod stocks, he said.
Although seals do eat young cod, it's a very small part of their
diet.
Graphic footage of the baby seals being clubbed to death on the
white ice in the late 1970s led to the collapse of the seal fur
markets. By that time seal populations had plummeted to less than
two million.
While activists like Aldworth dispute the sustainability of the
current hunt, they bitterly oppose what they see as the cruelty
involved.
Large clubs with spike on the end called hakapiks are used to bash
the seals on the head or they are shot with rifles from boats.
In 2002, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association investigated
the use of the hakapiks and determined when used properly they were
effective killing tools and as humane as killing done in commercial
slaughterhouses.
But USHS spokeswoman Aldworth says that proper use hakapiks is difficult
on the shifting, slippery ice, and in bad weather.
"Shooting small seals from a boat is difficult, so many are just
wounded and can lie for hours in agony before being killed," she
said.
IFAW, which has been tracking the seal hunt for three decades, says
that few hunters bother to make sure the seal pups are dead before
skinning them. Sometimes a single hunter will gather as many as
eight wounded seals and skin them one by one, amidst the indescribable
sound of wails and screams.
''What has happened to mercy, to beauty, to the value of a beating
heart?'' is the IFAW slogan in its campaign to save the seals.
The Canadian government claims less than five percent of seals suffer
needlessly, and that officials closely monitor the hunt and enforce
regulations.
"This year I saw a several groups of sealers, about 800 people in
all, working away, and not one enforcement official in sight," said
Aldworth.
More than 660 documented violations of the regulations have been
submitted by activists and not one official charge has been laid,
she said.
Although the European fashion industry is once again sporting fur
in their new collections, the seal fur market remains relatively
small at 16 million dollars a year.
Countries like Belgium, however, have banned sales of all seal products,
and Britain, Italy and others are likely to follow suit.
The 4,000 sealers in Canada are mainly fishers from Newfoundland
province. They can earn a few thousand dollars for two to three
weeks of work before the fishing season opens.
In 2000, around 40 percent of Canadians said they agreed with conducting
the annual seal harvest. In contrast, ''79 percent of Americans
surveyed oppose the seal hunt and most are prepared to boycott Canadian
seafood,'' as the USHS is proposing, Aldworth said.
Canada exports some three billion dollars in fish products to the
United States a year.
Prominent environmental activist Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, announced that he will be observing the hunt
this week from his ship, the Farley Mowat, even though he doesn't
have the proper permits from the Canadian government.
"Canada does not want us to see and document what happens up on
those forlorn and lonely ice floes," Watson said in an open letter.
* Stephen Leahy is a Tierramérica contributor.
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