Canada's Annual Seal Hunt Sparks Fiery Debate

In the three decades since French animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot hugged seal pups on the Maritime ice floes, the controversy over Canada's annual seal hunt hasn't gone away. This year, former Beatle Sir Paul Mc Cartney and his wife Heather were the latest in a long line of celebrities to visit the east coast and speak out against the centuries-old hunt that kills about 300,000 of the young seals each year.

The McCartneys, who had a verbal spat over the hunt with Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams on the Larry King Show last week, have since posted an appeal on the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) website asking for donations to help HSUS "continue to fight to save Canada's baby seals."

"Mr. and Mrs. McCartney are vegans," said Williams. "And what they stand for is the complete elimination of the killing of anything that is breathing."

The harp seal hunt takes place in the primary whelping grounds off the northwest coast of Newfoundland, which has the largest population of harp, hooded and gray seals in the world. The hunt usually starts in mid-March and ends when the quota is reached, usually in less than a week. An advisory group of scientists and fishing-industry representatives that make up the Fisheries Resource Conservation Society maintain the culling is necessary because rising seal numbers threaten cod stocks and other groundfish.

But Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) who has been protesting the hunt in his boat The Farley Mowat almost every year since 1977, believes the opposite is true—that the seal hunt is one of the main reasons for the decline in the Atlantic fishery. Watson says that because seals eat fish that prey on cod, there's a need for more seals, not less.

"The biggest predators of cod, aside from people, are other fish—the very fish that seals prey upon. So when you lower seal populations you increase predatory fish populations causing a further in decline in cod. There's a balance that worked for millions of years until we interfered with it."

The SSCS along with other animal protection groups organized a worldwide boycott of Canadian seafood last year in an effort to put pressure on the Canadian government to stop the hunt, which is the largest marine mammal cull in the world. According to HSUS, Canadian snow crab exports to the U.S. have dropped by more than $160 million—nearly ten times the value of the seal hunt. HSUS also says the financial reports of some of Canada's fishing companies show a drop in profits, with Newfoundland's largest fishing company, Fisheries Products International, taking a loss so great since the boycott that it's considering selling off most of its fishing rights.

"They don't want to listen to the conservation argument and they don't want to listen to the cruelty issues," says Watson. "But the one thing they do understand is profit and loss, and we have to make sure that the loss is greater than the profit."

One of the main accusations put forward by opponents of sealing is that many seals die in agony by being skinned while still alive. The SSCS says their post-mortem survey showed that 42 percent of seals are skinned alive. But the Department of Fisheries and Oceans contends that, as diving animals, seals store oxygen in their muscles which can make them have a swimming reflex after death, giving the appearance that the seals are alive when they're not.

Watson doesn't believe the sealers need the hunt for their survival as it only provides employment for two to three weeks a year. He says that for years the government subsidized the hunt, which ended up costing more than it was bringing in, and now with the impact of the boycott the hunt has again become a losing proposition. Watson says the hunt hasn't been abolished because of political reasons.

"They're persisting with it because of politics. They want to keep Newfoundland happy. Nobody wants to upset Newfoundland because the parties will lose their seats in that particular province—there's no other reason for it."

A number of groups that oppose the cull have garnered support around the world and turned public opinion in Europe and the U.S. against the hunt. Many believe the hunt is giving Canada a bad reputation overseas. Greenland, Denmark, Belgium and most recently Italy have banned imports of seal products after successful lobbying by animal rights groups. Most exports now go to Russia, China and Norway. Last February, close to a quarter of U.S. senators co-sponsored a resolution calling on the Canadian government to end the hunt. And in the United Kingdom, 130 Members of Parliament signed a motion urging the British government to stop importing sealskin. Britain is now said to be considering a ban. The U.S. banned the trade in seal products in 1972.

Josh Laughren, Director of Marine Conservation with the World Wildlife Fund, (WWF) says his group hasn't engaged in the seal hunt debate because WWF's concern is the health of the seal population, which isn't an issue this year. A 2004 survey found there are approximately 5.8 million harp seals now—triple what it was in the 1970s.

"It does appear that the seal population has actually gone up in the last few years, it's near historic highs. While there are and can be many issues around the hunt, the current status of the seals doesn't appear to be one of them."

Newfoundland sealer Jack Troake, who has been taking part in the hunt for the last 55 years, says he and his crew can make more than $9,000 each for five or six days work--money they need to put food on the table. Troake says that despite the controversy there's still a healthy market for seal products and he expects they'll be getting at least $70 a pelt this year.

"We've got a terrible mess here in this province," says Troake. "We're just barely hanging on by our fingernails with our codfish wiped out. And now with the boycott we got no snow crab any more. The only thing we've got left is the seal fishery."

Sealers are allowed to kill the seals by using clubs, hakapiks (spiked clubs), or guns. Troake says he and his crew shoot all the seals they take and because they're "the best shots in the world" the seals are killed instantly with a minimum of suffering. The price of the pelt drops to about $45 if it has an extra bullet hole, which Troake says provides incentive for the sealers to achieve a head shot every time. As to the brutality of the hunt, Troake says killing is sometimes necessary for survival.

"Killing any of God's creatures is cruel, you can't get away from it. It's nothing frivolous. It's something we don't like doing, but where we live, where our forefathers settled down, this is what we got to do to survive."

The start-date of the hunt is unsure this year because of unusually thin ice conditions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a situation environmental groups say is a result of global warming and a further threat to the seals which need sufficient ice pack to give birth. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has issued a news release urging the government to "act with caution" and cancel this year's hunt if there is insufficient ice for the animals to give birth. IFAW says the combination of a hunt and a lack of sufficient ice could result in the loss of almost all the seal pups born in the Gulf.

Vancouver Island animal rights activist Pattie Turcotte, who says she feels "sickened" by the hunt, collected 260 petition signatures which she sent to Ottawa to coincide with a discussion on the Animal Cruelty Bill at the end of September. She has also written several letters to government officials throughout the year appealing for an end to the hunt.

"I became aware of the Atlantic Seal hunt just over a year ago and deep inside my soul I knew it was wrong," says Turcotte. "I know these mammals are smart, they're not fish. I believe we need to protect them from further cruelty and exploitation."

A 2002 Canadian Veterinary Medical Association investigation concluded that 98 percent of seals taken during the hunt "are killed in an acceptably humane manner." But Turcotte points out that a group of independent veterinarians, invited by the IFAW to observe the hunt in 2001, stated in their report that the hunt results in "considerable and unacceptable suffering" for the young seals.

While acknowledging that as many as 15,000 sealers and their families rely on the seal hunt for their livelihood, Turcotte believes the seals are worth more alive, and suggests that tourism could bring in enough to replace the seal hunt—a suggestion Jack Troake laughs at, saying, "the sealers wouldn't see one penny off of it."

Troake says the Atlantic fishery failed because of government mismanagement, and asserts that the sealers won't take it lying down if the government tries to reduce the hunt to a level where it couldn't sustain itself.

"We will never let Ottawa do to the seal hunt what they done to the cod fishery, no way. We'll march on Ottawa and the House of Parliament before we let them do that to us."