Canada’s Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans has announced a new three-year seal-hunt quota that allows fishermen to kill 975,000 harp seals over the next three years; in two of those three years, sealers may kill as many as 350,000 harp seals annually. This means hunters can kill 75,000 more seals a year, starting in 2003, than in the last five years.
“The increase comes despite evidence that the quota of 275,000 seals was unsustainable,” says Dr. Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist with The HSUS, “and it quietly condones the fact that sealers exceeded this quota last year, an act that most natural resource managers would condemn.”
The stated purpose of switching to a three-year plan is to present “sealers with greater certainty in planning their activities,” but the plan seems better designed to cause a serious decline in seal numbers, with unknown ecological consequences, Rose notes.
Without presenting any new evidence that taking seals in such large numbers is sustainable, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Minister Robert G. Thibault, lauded this new approach to harvesting “a valuable natural resource.”
And so the hunt goes on. Even after decades of public condemnation, Canada continues annually to club and shoot hundreds of thousands of harp and hooded seals, two species it reduces to the category of “natural resources” rather than sentient beings. In fact, the Canadian government subsidizes the seal-hunting industry, making it easier for hunters to kill more of the animals.
In 2002, with relatively little public outcry, the Canadian government allowed the most massive slaughter of marine mammals on its shores since 1967. The reported kill was more than 307,000 harp seals—which exceeded the Canadian Department of Fisheries’ quota by more than 32,000. And if unreported kills were included, the total would be much higher. (The reported numbers include only the seals who are delivered to processing plants, not the seals who are severely wounded and die later.)
The harp seal hunt is sometimes represented as a part of Canada’s culture, not unlike indigenous whaling, but in truth, it is just another commercial hunt. Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans reports issuing 11,185 commercial sealing licenses in 2001. The seals are killed for their pelts, their penises (which are used to make aphrodisiacs in Asian markets), oil (which Canada promotes as a health supplement), and meat.
The country’s commercial seal hunting season runs from November 15 to May 15, but hunters do most of their killing in the spring. At the beginning of the season, hunters use a club or a large ice-pick-like hakapik to kill the younger seals. As the season progresses, hunters switch to rifles for both young and old seals.
It’s one of the few hunts to target young animals. Although the Canadian government has outlawed the killing of pups who still have their white coats, a two-week-old seal pup who has molted is considered fair game. (Hunters refer to seals this age as “beaters.”) While hunters do kill adult seals, an estimated 95% of those killed are 12 days to 12 months old.
For reasons known only to itself, the Canadian government subsidizes the seal hunt. According to reports from the Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment, more than $20 million in subsidies were provided to the sealing industry between 1995 and 2001. Those subsidies came from entities such as the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Human Resources Development Council, and Canada Economic Development-Quebec. These subsidies take a variety of forms, including funding the salaries for seal processing plant workers, market research and development trips, and capital acquisitions for processing plants.
Regulation and Enforcement
Seal management falls under Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). For the most part, the seal hunt itself is covered by the Marine Mammal Regulations section of Canada’s Fisheries Act. The DFO tells the public that “[H]umane practices are supported by industry and strictly enforced by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Penalties are among the toughest in the world.” The Canadian government is expected to release revised Marine Mammal Regulations during the 2003 hunt.
In 1995, the Canadian government raised the so-called Total Allowable Catch quota to 250,000, and implemented the “personal use” hunting license, which made it legal for a person with a Provincial hunting license or hunting capability certificate to hunt seals. The next year, the reported number of seals killed rose to nearly meet that quota, reaching 242,000 (about four times what it had been reported the previous year). The government’s response was to increase the quota to 275,000 for 1997. The hunters exceeded that quota by 7,000 in 1998—without any punishment.
But in 2000, the reported catch dropped, probably because of difficult hunting conditions and because there wasn’t (and still isn’t) much of a global market for seal products. Still, the Canadian government promotes the hunt. And although the government received scientific evidence that the quota is unsustainable, it has kept the quota at 275,000—a number that, when combined with estimates of animals mortally wounded but not recovered, has been exceeded annually with the exception of 2000.
yum!
Many people may become vegetarian but we still need some proteins which can only be found in meat. But these seals here are mainly killed for their fur. I don’t think we need fur to survive… Some may argue “but we also need their meat”. No we don’t need seal meat to survive. Why should we have to kill every exotic species just to taste their meat?? Instead of killing every species we should stick to only about 10 or 20 “ordinary” species (cow, pig, chicken,…). All the other species must be left alone. It’s just ridiculous to kill exotic deep-sea fish because eating rare deep-fish gives you the feeling of being more important than others…
grrrr