Posted on 03/07/2005 4:37:33 PM PST by pissant
I will repeat myself:
Don't be fooled by this emotional blather. You people don't know the facts. You don't understand controlled harvest is the best way to ensure healthy seal populations. It's called wildlife MANAGEMENT.
Go ahead and blow a gasket, but think. If the seal hunters can't harvest the pelts for a living, then what can they do? Fish.
And what do seals eat? Fish. Stopping the harvest of seals has been done before, and guess what happened? The seal hunters (turned fishermen) decimated the seal populations because the seals eat fish and competed with them for their livelyhood. Seal populations plumeted. Once the hunt was once again allowed, the fisherman quit killing every seal they saw because they were worth money once again. The population rebounded to record levels once again.
You may not like the harvest of surplus seals, but the population is once again stable and within carrying capacity. The fact remains, the fur is really nice and the population of seals is healthy.
As for the value of seal meat:
Here's some info....
http://www.pagophilus.org/hunt/mkts.htm
A small amount of seal meat, particularly the flippers, is consumed locally by Newfoundlanders, and some claim it to have an aphrodisiac effect. Relatively new products such as seal pepperoni, salami, sausage, and canned seal meat are also being marketed. Seal meat is also processed to extract the protein in a powdered form. In recent years, markets for seal meat have been poor, and most of the seal meat produced by the commercial hunt has been used as feed on fur farms.
Seal oil is a source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are reputed to lower blood cholesterol and prevent coronary heart disease. Processed into capsules, seal oil is sold as a nutritional supplement for use in treating diabetes, arthritis, heart conditions, and a long list of aches, pains, and other ailments. Seal oil is also used in the manufacture of margarine, cheese, cosmetics, hand lotions, and other oil-based products. In 2000, seal oil prepared for human consumption was reported to have the highest value of all seal products.
Seal penises are shipped to Asian markets where they have a wide reputation as an aphrodisiac and can sell for upwards of $500 US each (Lavigne et al. 1999). Penises are often dried and consumed in capsule form or in a tonic.
As for the real facts on the seal population and management:
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/facts-faits_e.htm
It's easy to condemn the seal hunters when you have no basis of fact to go on, but after you learn more about the hunt, it really isn't what the left makes it out to be. Getting warm?
More emotional seal saving blather.... ping.
What's a baby seal's least favorite drink?
Wrong. See #41.
Club soda?
Canadian Club, to be specific (c8
Personally, I like baby seals. They taste a lot like spotted owl.
Of course. LOL
I recommend using Mesa Mint as a garnish.
After researching The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, I found out that these guys are so radically violent, Greenpeace won't go near them:
http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/347
“We’re not a protest organization, we’re a policing organization,” Paul Watson has said of his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS). A pirate organization is more like it. Sporting the skull and crossbones, his black or battleship-gray ships sail menacingly through the waves. They are painted with the names of the boats Watson has rammed and sunk.
The ships are fitted with water cannons, a concrete-filled bow made for ramming, and an attachment dubbed the “can opener” that can tear open a boat’s hull. In his book Earth Warrior, David Morris writes that Watson wears a long bowie knife at his side and carries AK-47s on board. He blasts Richard Wagner’s rousing “Ride of the Valkyries” to herald his arrival and terrify his victims.
SSCS’s mission is to stop fishing of which it disapproves. Its preferred methods? Ramming and sinking fishing ships, throwing butyric acid on their decks, and firing machine guns. Watson argues that United Nations resolutions authorize him to commit violent acts. But he regularly interferes with fisherman and hunters who are committing no crime. He serves as judge, jury, and executioner -- while enjoying the same tax-exempt status as universities and churches.
Some of the animal-rights movement’s most notorious terrorists got their start with SSCS. One of them, convicted arsonist Rodney Coronado, had Watson’s approval to plan and execute an attack on Iceland’s whaling industry. He and a colleague sank two of the fleet’s four ships and destroyed a processing facility.
SSCS is run with an iron fist by its founder, “Captain” Paul Watson. “When this ship becomes a democracy,” he likes to say to his crew, “you’ll be the first to know.” Watson is a dyslexic who “progressed from deckhand to able seaman without knowing how to tie a knot” with the Canadian Coast Guard and Norwegian and Swedish merchant marines.
In Vancouver, Watson joined a group of anti-war activists who attempted to forcibly shut down American nuclear tests. These radicals branched out into environmental activism and became Greenpeace, of which Watson was a founder. But Watson’s violent tactics became too much for Greenpeace, which kicked him out in 1977, after he assaulted seal hunters. Watson now assails his old comrades for being too wimpy, calling Greenpeace “the Avon ladies of the environmental movement.”
Soon after Watson’s eviction from Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and its ship-ramming philosophy were born. SSCS’s band of pirates have disrupted the legal Canadian seal hunt, attacked whaling ships and fishing boats using driftnets, and taken credit for spiking (inserting large nails into) thousands of trees. The group has sunk at least ten ships in Iceland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, and the Canary Islands. Watson has even sunk his own ships rather than let the authorities take them. And he has spent time in the jails of Canada and the Netherlands. “Any whaling ship on the ocean is a target for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,” he has said.
Actor Richard Dean Anderson, best known for portraying the quick-thinking handyman hero MacGyver in the TV series of the same name, is on the Board of Directors.
Sounds like how the white rhino ended up about extinct in the wild. Sounds like another good argument for nuking China and SE Asia.
I couldn't care less about the looney organization that is protesting.
I didn't see any information that indicated they "hunt" baby seals for food and sustenance. It looked like they "hunt" (if you can call clubbing a helpless baby "hunting") for the fur and are trying to wring a few more bucks out of the meat which doesn't appear to be too popular.
Maybe we should send our high school dropouts who aren't capable of doing real work either up there. Clubbing babies may be just up their alley, too.
Populations can be managed more humanely than holding a baby clubbing festival, and that's just the type of nonsense justification garbage I'd expect to hear from liberals.
The truth is they are clubbing babies for the money and don't give a rat's a$$ what the population is.
BTTT!!!!!
Boy are you wound up emotionally. Get a grip, it's none of your business really, and they are not "babies". You are giving them human identities.
Your comments end up sounding racist, anti-capitalist, and emotionally unstable. Just what the left is looking for.
I never really wanted to hunt seals- until now.
None of my business...
Hmm.
Then why are we all wasting our time here expressing our opinions on things that aren't our business.
It is common practice for people to refer to the young of all species, especially mammalian species, as babies.
We aren't goats, yet we refer to human children as kids.
Terri Schiever has a lot of people going over the edge getting involved in something that is none of their business at this site. Or is it none of their business?
God did give us care of this planet and the animals. A conservative is one that conserves, and makes Godly use of the resources on Earth, and humane use of and protection for the animals.
Would you respect a man who whipped his horse just for anger? And let his dogs starve due to laziness? Or left his child in a hot car in the summer because a poker game was more important to him? If I didn't respect such a man, would I be a racist? Does the race matter, or the actions?
I don't know who conducts this "hunt," so how can I be racist in my comments?
If you don't think capitalism needs some rules to work well, you don't know your history very well. I am not one who thinks it needs a lot of rules. Thou shall not steal and don't mussle the ox that treadeth out the corn are about all we need for quidelines.
As for wound up. My blood pressure is fine. Gotta go.
He did that because he said he has a 5 yr old daughter to raise.
I thought she was 15 or so. Thanks for the info.
"In 1996, Richard met Apryl Prose, and together they celebrated the birth of their first child, a daughter, on August 2, 1998. Wylie Quinn Annarose Anderson entered the world at 7 lbs. 11 oz. Richard speaks with great enthusiasm about his new adventure of fatherhood, and takes great pride in his reputation as a doting dad. Richard lives both in Vancouver and near Los Angeles, as well as owning a cabin in northern Minnesota."
From an unofficial RDA website.
Interesting other information is that he dated Marlee Matlin at one time.
" don't love white baby seal fur, and I don't need it."
I don't love cow meat, and I don't need it. It's brutal to kill cows for their meat...if they need population control, lets put them on Cow Contraceptives. Otherwise, let them live in Happy Cow Land, like in India, and like you want the seals to live. /sarcasm to make a point...
Ed
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