Stop the Canadian harp seal hunt - 400,000 to be killed 2015

Hi everyone,
 
I have just returned from photographing baby harp seals on the sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was a magical experience to spend time with the adorable – and vulnerable – seal pups and their mothers on their icy nursery grounds.
 
I am sure you all have heard about the seal hunt that takes place in Canada every spring. While you may hear less about this hunt than in previous years when the alluring white coat pups were still being killed, don’t be lulled into thinking the hunt has ended
 
While the very youngest seals, who still have their white coats, can no longer be legally hunted, harp seals are still being killed by the hundreds of thousands as soon as they shed their white coats at just 12 days old.  
 
The pups are weaned at 12 days when their mothers return to the sea. But the pups stay on the ice alone for another 5 or 6 weeks until they are old enough to swim and feed on their own.
 
Over 95% of seals killed in the hunt are less than 3 months old, many before they have even eaten their first solid food or are old enough to dive into the water to escape the hunters.
 
The very pups I met and photographed could be dead by the end of the month, killed using methods that veterinarians claim are inhumane. Enforcement of recent regulations that are supposed to prevent the worst cruelty is lax at best.
 
These seals are killed for their fur and, to a lesser extent, their oil. While some of the meat is eaten, most of the carcasses are left to rot on the ice stained red with their blood.
 
While ice conditions this year have been favourable for the seals, climate change means this ice-dependent species is becoming increasingly vulnerable. In years with little ice and ice that melts too soon before the pups are ready to swim, mortality can be as high as 100%.
 
Despite all this, the Canadian government Department of Fisheries and Oceans has just announced that the seal kill quota for this year is 400,000 harp seals!!! This is the same government agency that managed the Atlantic cod fishery into extinction and is now doing the same for the Pacific salmon and herring fisheries. We cannot let them do the same with harp seals.
 
The Canadian harp seal hunt is the largest marine mammal kill in the world!
 
Please speak up for these vulnerable seals and call for an end to the seal hunt.
 
More information can be found here: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/seal_hunt/facts/about_seal_hunt.html
 
and here: http://www.hsi.org/world/canada/news/releases/2015/03/canada-seal-hunt-quota-statement-030215.html
 
And please take action here: https://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=104&ea.campaign.id=26387&ea.tracking.id=website
 
Thanks,
Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com
 
 
 

Canada is a country that depends on extraction of it resources to supply the industrialized countries of the world, much the same as the Congo etc. It seems any effort to curb extractions becomes a matter of national pride to continue such come high water or hell. The seal slaughter is ridiculous and benefits very few, yet it continues. Do the provinces have an initiative process to by pass the national fisheries, like the American west states? The public can't be in favor of this travesty.

Interesting thought, Mike O. As far as I know, Canadian provinces do not have an initiative process like that in the US. Does anyone have any more accurate information on this?

British Columbia has a rather onerous process for provincial matters that can require the provincial government to hold a referendum provided a certain percentage of all eligible voters in every single riding in the province sign a petition calling for such action. But this process does not affect federal matters such as the seal hunt.

Even if such an initiative process was available, in Newfoundland, where most of the seal hunting takes place, I think it is unlikely to be successful as my experience having lived there for a time is that most Newfoundlanders support or at least do not oppose the hunt.

The other location where a significant hunt takes place is near the Magdalen Islands which are in Quebec. I do not know where the majority of Quebecois stand on the issue, but I can tell you that support for seal hunting is very prevalent among the Magdalen Islanders. Many see the hunt as part of their culture. But the Magdalens are a tiny part of Quebec.

That said, I suppose if a lucrative government buyout of their sealing licenses were offered, perhaps the sealers would be interested as seal hunting is dangerous and not all that lucrative.

In the rest of Canada, there is considerable opposition to the seal hunt but no way to exert influence through provincial channels that I know of.

Given the anti-environmental stance of the current federal government, probably the most effective pressure against the seal hunt would come from outside Canada as Prime Minister Harper shows no interest in considering any opinions from Canadians that differ from his own. Some countries have banned importation of Canadian seal products and the continuation of those bans in addition to bans from other nations are important to reduce the value of seal products which makes the hunt less worthwhile to the hunters. It is also crucial to prevent other markets for seal products, such as China, from opening up further. Only dollars, I fear, will have any effect because, as you rightly note, there is a certain stubborn obstinance against ending the seal hunt whether or not it makes economic or ecological sense to continue it. In fact, the hunt is heavily subsidized by the government with more dollars than the hunt generates. It is just insanity! And hundreds of thousands of seal pups pay the price.

I wish we did have an initiative process here like that in the US.

Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

Mike in O wrote:Canada is a country that depends on extraction of it resources to supply the industrialized countries of the world, much the same as the Congo etc.  It seems any effort to curb extractions becomes a matter of national pride to continue such come high water or hell.  The seal slaughter is ridiculous and benefits very few, yet it continues.  Do the provinces have an initiative process to by pass the national fisheries, like the American west states?  The public can't be in favor of this travesty.

Good point.

I did sign it Roberta.  

Thanks for posting this information, Roberta. Canadians can end the seal slaughter through the political process by making this an election issue and letting MP candidates know that, if they are not willing to put and end to the seal 'hunt', voters will put an end to their political careers.

Everyone can help no matter where they are by drawing attention to the issue and putting pressure on those in Canada who push for the continuation and expansion of the killing.

With the massacre approaching, the time to take action is now.

Here is a brief newsletter with a short list of ways people can help end this atrocity:

Save the Seals 2015

One of these ways is by joining a social media awareness campaign (with a time limit that ends in just 4 days) that has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. The direct link to this campaign is here:

Social Media Blast


Thank you.

Diana

We should organize photo workshops there and get as many great captures of what later gets slaughtered so as to keep up public pressure. Like so many other atrocities..... "Out of sight....Out of mind". We who photograph could make a difference.


Paul

I agree it is important to keep things in sight and in mind, Paul. More photos of adorable pups may help, though the hunt continues despite the plethora of such images already out there.

What may be more effective in stopping the hunt is more current photos of the hunt itself. In response to the shock and outrage (and boycotts of seal products by the EU and other jurisdictions etc) that photos and videos of hunts in the past evoked, the Canadian government has now made it illegal to observe or photograph the seal hunt without special permit. And those opposed to the hunt and not about to be given permits.

Right now, the government says that pups can no longer be killed and the type of hunt shown in these older images of hunting no longer occurs. Of course that is not exactly true. While many older images show whitecoat pups being killed, and while whitecoats can no longer be killed legally, what the government avoids mentioning is that the pups lose their white coats at 12-14 days of age and at that still tender age, they can most certainly be slaughtered. Sealers argue pups who have lost their white coats are no longer pups because they are weaned at 12 days old. But they neglect to mention that these 12 day old seals are still helpless babies who stay on the ice for several more weeks before they are able to swim much or catch their own food. They basically stay on the ice after their mothers leave, fasting but increasing in strength and physical skills. But they can't just jump in the water and dive down to escape the hunters. They are still babies, just not in white coats anymore.

Babies or not, the Canadian seal hunt is still the largest marine mammal kill in the world!

The government and sealers also tell you that new regulations are in place to ensure that the seal hunt is now quite humane. For example, sealers are supposed to undergo training in how to determine whether a seal is actually dead before skinning it. Though, IMHO the terror of just seeing seals all around being killed must be torture enough for those pups not yet clubbed with the hakapik. And various anti-sealing groups claim that veterinarians and other experts who have observed how the seal hunt is conducted under these new regulations find that the hunt is still brutal with much suffering for the seals. They also claim the new regulations are not properly enforced.

So observation and footage of how the hunt is currently conducted would help determine whether the current hunt really has "improved" over the whitecoat killing days. (The fact it is now illegal to observe and photograph the hunt or even be within a certain distance of the hunt leads me to be very suspect that things are any better now.) That sort of footage could help reignite opposition to the hunt. (Might need some undercover investigative reporter to get that...)

I do agree with your premise, though, that getting more ecotourists out there might help if the sealers could make more money from ecotourism than from seal hunting. Of course, right now, they can do both - take tourists out when the pups are whitecoats and then after that, the tourist season is ended and the sealers go out and hunt.

Given the strong sealing "culture" in Newfoundland and in the Magdalen Islands, convincing them to give up sealing for ecotourism would be challenging. Natural Habitat (a nature tour company) tried to get agreements with local people that would require them not to kill seals in exchange for work guiding Nat Hab tour groups to seal watch, but Nat Hab was not successful at getting that sort of agreement and so it stopped offering harp seal tours altogether. The Nat Hab experience makes for really interesting reading and can be found at the links below.

http://www.harpseals.org/about_the_hunt/seal_tours.php

http://www.harpseals.org/about_the_hunt ... hp#cancels

http://www.harpseals.org/about_the_hunt ... .php#after

However, I am still hopeful that, if ecotourism increases and the local people can see the economic benefit of it and especially if that can exceed the income from seal hunting, local attitudes can change and sealers can start to take pride in applying their skills to seal viewing.

It does take considerable skill to guide seal viewers, especially if you go by boat as I did. Negotiating a small vessel through dense pack ice is not something everyone can do and I have great admiration for our captain. 

And I can also tell you that the people of Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands are among the finest people I have ever met, seal hunting nothwithstanding. The people I have met on these islands have all been kind, generous, helpful and welcoming unlike anywhere else I have ever been.

I like the people but I do not like the seal hunt. As far as I know, one of the most effective thing that has been done to stop/reduce the seal hunt is to keep pressure on foreign markets (using images and videos and anything else) to ban seal products. The EU ban did result is a reduced (though still high) number of seals killed as markets dried up. Keeping the pressure on to ensure existing bans continue (bans which Canada keeps trying to get overturned) and to extend new bans to other nations seems to me to be a useful strategy. If the value of seal pelts decline due to boycotts, then the income possible from ecotourism would become that much more important to the seal hunters, it seems to me. But I am no expert on this issue...



Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

Here is another petition to sign to protest the harp seal hunt in eastern Canada. Urge the European Union to resist pressure to weaken its ban on the trade in products of commercial seal hunts: 
http://action.hsi.org/ea-action/action? ... ef=Default

Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

 
Hi everyone,
 
I have been editing my images of baby harp seals from the east coast of Canada, taken last month on the sea ice when the pups still had the white coat they are born with. And these images make me smile because the pups are so adorable and innocent and trusting. You can walk right up to them.
 
[img]file:///D:\Users\Roberta\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.jpg[/img]
 

And then I came across this (warning: graphic) http://www.thesealsofnam.org/seal-hunt-contact-the-canadian-government/
 
This is what happens to hundreds of thousands of these seal pups when they lose their white coats at 12 days old. Still babies, they are killed in a bloody, wasteful and heartless hunt.
 
Please sign the powerfully worded letter at the above link calling for an end to this slaughter. Or bypass the really graphic image of the hunt and go directly to the letter here: http://sealsofnamgovt.weebly.com/email-canadian-govt.html
And please spread the word.
 
For more information on the hunt, go here: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/seal_hunt/facts/about_seal_hunt.html
 
Thanks for taking action.
 
Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

Signed..

Between the seal hunt, which I have supported efforts to illegalize  for 10 years now (even monetarily), and the fact that it is legal to sport-hunt the Polar Bear (already on the fast track to extinction) in a spectacular country like Canada, and the fact that all of the efforts to stop this have fallen on deaf ears, I am ashamed that this is allowed in north America.

Aren't Polar Bears hunted in every country that they occur?

No, Mike. Polar bears are protected in Arctic Norway (Svalbard) (except they can be killed in self-defence). There is a limited aboriginal hunt for polar bears in Alaska and Greenland. Russia banned polar bear hunting in 1956 but I believe a limited subsistence hunt has been reopened in the last few years. To the best of my knowledge, Canada is the only country that allows a commercial sport hunt for polar bears where non-aboriginals and non-residents can hunt because here Inuit hunters can sell their permit to sport hunters. American hunters cannot import their polar bear trophies into the US as the polar bear is now listed under the Endangered Species Act. More info here: http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ ... harvesting

Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

Thanks Roberta...I always thought of native Americans as citizens (they also hunt endangered whale species) Not allowing commercial harvest means a lot (I used to get polar bear for steelhead flies), take away the money and the incentive dries up. White seal was always sold as a substitute for polar bear for flies.

I am unclear on what your comment about native American being citizens refers to. Certainly I see nothing in my post to indicate they are not citizens. Is it the non-resident thing? If so, that just means that in non-Canadian countries that allow limited polar bear hunting, only people who are citizens/residents of that country are allowed to hunt polar bears (and usually those citizens/residents are also aboriginal). But in Canada, you can be a citizen/resident of any foreign country at all and come here to my country and kill a polar bear, which really sucks IMHO.

That said, most polar bear biologists would say that polar bear hunting (which for the most part is supposedly well regulated) is not nearly as great a threat to polar bear populations as climate change and loss of ice. But things are additive, so hunting + thinning ice = that much more stress on the bear populations. (Add in pollution, Arctic oil drilling etc etc and things get even more bleak. Hunting is just one of the easiest stresses to remove immediately.

Polar bear viewing can potentially bring in far more income than trophy hunting in Canada. An Inuit guide might make $50,000 or so guiding in a hunter to kill a bear once, or $5000 per person to guide in way more than 10 people to view the same bear repeatedly and over years. Maybe such a guide can even collect some shed polar bear fur found out on the tundra for those steelhead flies while out guiding all those ecotourists. Certainly I know of a few Inuit guides who are starting to think this way.

Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

Mike in O wrote:Thanks Roberta...I always thought of native Americans as citizens (they also hunt endangered whale species) Not allowing commercial harvest means a lot (I used to get polar bear for steelhead flies), take away the money and the incentive dries up.  White seal was always sold as a substitute for polar bear for flies.

The point is that Canada is the only one that allow SPORT TROPHY hunting of Polar bears.  It has nothing to do with citizenship. Just recently it was all over the news about an American Woman from Alaska that went to Canada to "bag" a Polar bear and was successful.  There are a number of Canadian companies that actively advertise to hunters in the US to guide them in order get them their Polar Bear. 

Here is a particularly despicable advertiser - they tell you all about the Polar bear and Musk Ox hunting treks that they offer and then have the gall to put in a paragraph about how Canada has 15,500 Polar Bears and is a proven world leader in Polar Bear "conservation" in order to make it sound OK to go hunt them with their company:
http://www.canadanorthoutfitting.com/polar_bear.shtml

And if you look to the bottom, if the guide feels like it, you get the bonus of killing seals too!

Now, back to the Harp Seals, discussion!

That is disturbing, E.J.I just do not understand trophy hunting. And a seal hunting license goes for a measly $5.00! The life of a seal should be worth way more than that.

The commercial harp seal hunt, while not a trophy hunt, is still incomprehensible to me. I understand subsistence hunting and while I am a vegetarian myself, I don't have a huge issue with someone who is a good shot making a clean kill of an abundant species as long as they use every part of the carcass. But I do NOT have any respect at all for trophy hunting (like for bears) or for massive trumped up commercial slaughters like the harp seal hunt. The government has to subsidize the harp seal hunt, struggles to and drum up markets for seal products and fights against bans from the EU and elsewhere on seal products, so clearly there is something driving the seal hunt beyond anything that makes ecological or economic sense.

Roberta Olenick

neverspook wrote:That is disturbing, E.J.I just do not understand trophy hunting. And a seal hunting license goes for a measly $5.00! The life of a seal should be worth way more than that.

The commercial harp seal hunt, while not a trophy hunt, is still incomprehensible to me. I understand subsistence hunting and while I am a vegetarian myself, I don't have a huge issue with someone who is a good shot making a clean kill of an abundant species as long as they use every part of the carcass. But I do NOT have any respect at all for trophy hunting (like for bears) or for massive trumped up commercial slaughters like the harp seal hunt. The government has to subsidize the harp seal hunt, struggles to and drum up markets for seal products and fights against bans from the EU and elsewhere on seal products, so clearly there is something driving the seal hunt beyond anything that makes ecological or economic sense.

Roberta Olenick

I know just what your feeling hearing your questions. I think I have studied the problem more than most and have come to certain conclusions a lot of which delve into the physche of the human mind. But a lot of what we are dealing with is tradition. Hunters site this aspect  very often as something they  want to feel as if they are getting back to some other wonderful and more meaningful time. They might get a whiff of that tradition, but in reality it's more like only a delusion of of what used to be. In the pioneer days life was tough, hunting was not the pleasure seeking activity as say some king or duke would enjoy on his estate. For the average man of old it was a grind. A job to be done.

So maybe there's a bit of Canada and the governing class that feels it needs to retain those things that built Canada in the first place. Maybe there is a delusion that they cannot give it up without losing some part of who they are. And there might be some resentment that is felt towards the rest of the world butting in and trying to tell them what and how to do things. So they fight back.

For sure though the sport and trophy hunter does not feel towards animals as most here do. It's not the psychopath thing, its a bit more complicated than that. Much of what they think is programmed from how they may have grown up and how that environment influenced them.

But all of it is out of place with today's world. Our quickly disappearing natural environments, devastation from over harvesting, impending climate change, nonstop commercial exploitation and development and more all dictate that we need save now as much as we can. That I guess I am saying puts things in a direct conflict with what the powers that want to exploit the natural environments do for whatever their gain. Most of us get all this, but many have not caught on or just refuse to believe that the past is the past and living now is to do so in a very different way and attitude that never before had been.


But to get back as to why a particular person with a gun or other technological device will ignore that animal's desire to live, right to life, and ignore his or hers own sense of empathy and kill that animal from afar.....well I'm afraid it's totally selfish. Not that the rest of us aren't also in many ways. But to kill something is the most intense total emotional package that there is. Even hunters get sick for what they do at times, but the act is so totally stimulating to every kind of feeling, thought, and emotion....nothing else has equal measure. It's more than a thrill too. Or kicks.  It's what we all want i guess one could say...that ultimate enveloping embrace of being alive. So like a religion might do for some this way, the sport hunter is trying to get the same. In that aspect. And the bigger and badder the prey animal the greater the high. Remember that the Colosseum flourished for 800 years and they killed animals in the millions there. Wasn't just hunters in the crowd either. Killing is a huge stimulus..one that cannot on that level be had quite in any other way. It's why a lot of people go to war too. Killing breathes life into the killer .....bottomline.... The act is further legitimized,in their minds at least, because it seems that's what animal's do and it would be a natural act. And it's true they do. Hence the feelings as you have expressed that if they eat the meat you have little problem with the act. But the fact is the meat is a secondary motivation to what I have just said. With the animals, their survival is the primary reason for their hunt...not the secondary. All sport hunters, or at least 99.9% of them can go home to their refrigerators and grocery stores, unlike any wild animal that has no such option. So it's a delusion all around in the mind, but, what they want out of the act of killing is real to all of us. Fortunately most of us have found much better ways to obtain that that also fit the times we live in. If one thinks about it, are there any real hunters out there other than native peoples? They are almost all sport hunters. Huge difference...

But marketing and money. There's another subject one needs to address when examining all this.....


Well sorry I got a bit long with the words, but hopefully something might of helped..


Paul

Anyone seen this Lady??

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... ff-image-6


What does puzzle me is that there seems to be such a lack of empathy for animals in some people and yet in others the empathy level is greater for animals than it is even for other people....

I know as a species we are evolving constantly on many levels. Could there be any truth that some seeking recognition and attention will do anything to get those two things, overriding feelings of empathy? And with the advent of industrialized slaughter, humans have become rather desensitized to animals being anything but for our pleasure and dinner?. Couple that with a mind set that connects sport and trophy hunting with affluence and privileged aren't we just talking about another way that certain people fight back against their own inferiority and insecurities? Even at the expense of their own sense of humanity? I mean if we abandon our humanity then exactly what are we then?? Aren't we then less than animals?? Like monsters then??



Paul