Canada starts cull of 270,000 seals

20/07/2006 00:00:00 The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has a team of experts in Canada documenting the cruelty of this year’s commercial seal hunt.

Thousands of seal pups are believed to have perished before the hunt began, with global warming melting the ice needed for seals to give birth and nurse their pups successfully. Despite this, the Canadian government gave the go-ahead for this year’s hunt with a catch limit of 270,000 seals. IFAW’s observers are used to seeing thousands of young seal pups in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence at this time of year, but with extremely poor ice conditions, they have so far seen only a few isolated pups struggling in the slushy water. However, the Canadian government ignored calls to abandon this year’s hunt, despite predicted high pup mortality due to global warming, and set a total allowable catch limit of 270,000 seals.

The IFAW team travelled by plane and helicopter and observed a single sealing vessel as it began hunting seals. As expected, 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.

'We saw a lot of long-distance shooting – sealers firing at seals on slushy, moving ice. 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. 'We had been told by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that there would be no hunting in the Southern Gulf today, so I was shocked when we learned that there was sealing activity going on. There are so few pups left, and here the sealers were wiping out the last few survivors,' added Fink.

'The sealing vessel we observed this morning had to search out small pans of ice to find a few lone seals.'

Robbie Marsland, UK Director of IFAW, said: 'This is the largest marine mammal hunt in the world, and it is cruel and unnecessary. This year’s total allowable catch limit of 270,000 seals is also unsustainable. This cruelty must end.'

In the UK, IFAW is calling for a national ban on the import of harp and hooded seal products. Several other nations have already taken action to stop the import of harp and hooded seal products in Europe. The UK Government recently announced it would support the introduction of an EU-wide ban. However, it could take several years for this to come into effect and IFAW is keen for the UK to introduce a national ban in the meantime.