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Outrage at new mass slaughter of baby seals
Guardian ^ | 04/11/04 | Mark Townsend

Posted on 04/10/2004 6:53:21 PM PDT by Pikamax

Outrage at new mass slaughter of baby seals

Images of cull return to haunt world again

Mark Townsend Sunday April 11, 2004 The Observer

Soon after dawn breaks above Newfoundland tomorrow, the ice sheets will be suffused with crimson as an army of hunters embark on the largest single cull of baby seals in more than half a century. Up to 10,000 animals are scheduled to be killed every hour during daylight. By nightfall on Tuesday, at least 140,000 young harp seals will have been shot, beaten or clubbed to death on the huge ice floes found among the seas off Canada's far northern coast.

During that 36 hours, around 2,500 men clutching steel-tipped clubs will repeatedly fan out across the vast wilderness in search of their prey. Some seals will be be killed using hakapics - a primitive weapon with a metal spike on the end of a wooden pole. The remainder will be shot with high-velocity, long-distance rifles.

Witnesses to last week's initial smaller-scale culls in the nearby Gulf of St Lawrence described entire ice shelves sopping with blood. Elsewhere, red trails criss-crossed the ice where carcasses had been dragged by hooks to waiting fishing vessels. They also reported a number of young animals left convulsing after initial strikes failed to kill them instantly.

The Canadian government is determined to keep the eyes of the world's media away from the killing zone. Special permits must be obtained before the public can venture near the ice, a process critics claim is often a needlessly lengthy and frustrating exercise designed to thwart observers from witnessing the cull.

But The Observer has obtained exclusive pictures documenting the first hours of last week's preliminary culls - footage that offers an insight into the methods used. Activists for the animal rights group International Fund for Animal Welfare hope the images will provoke widespread outrage and lead to an international ban on seal products.

Any ban will come too late for this year's seals. A flotilla of 150 trawlers will gather at dawn tomorrow 100 miles north of Newfoundland to begin the most intensive phase of the cull. Animal rights protesters are stunned and frustrated, complaining that the cull will be conducted unobserved due to its remote location.

Katy Heath-Eves, who is monitoring the situation for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: 'The cull is back with a vengeance. Two days is all they need. It's going to be bloody out there.'

This week's hunt confirms a sharp escalation in the size of Canada's seal cull, which almost died out amid international outrage 20 years ago. Yet, quietly and away from the world's media, the hunt has been growing steadily in size over the past six years.

By the end of May, one in three of the region's seals will have been killed, many for their natural fur. The Canadian government has given its fishermen permission to kill 350,000 baby harp seals, an increase of 100,000 above the previous year. Over the next five weeks, fishermen using smaller boats will account for the rest of the quota. In addition, critics claim that many wounded animals who escape under the ice for safety, where they die, are not included in official kill counts.

The sudden growth of the cull has been aided by new markets in Russia and Poland alongside a sharp rise in the price of sealskin. Since 2001, the value of a top-grade harp sealskin has more than doubled to about £30, almost the price of the early 1970s. Seal genitals are often hacked off and sold to the Far East, where they are prized as an aphrodisiac and can fetch up to £200 each. Seal hunters will earn up to £600 a day this week before returning to theport of St John's, Newfoundland, on Wednesday.

Yet advocates of the hunt claim not only is it vital to the local economy, with thousands of jobs at stake, but that the growing seal population is contributing to a collapse in cod. An adult seal can eat an estimated ton of sea life annually. Local media call seals 'huge fish-gobblers'. However, this is contradicted by the findings of independent scientists, who blame the dramatic collapse of the Newfoundland fishery, once one of the richest in the world but now a watery wasteland, on intensive overfishing.

Whatever the truth, this week's large-scale resumption of the cull is a far cry from when the practice appeared virtually finished. On the US banning the import of seal products in 1972 and the European Union outlawing imports of the white pelts of the youngest pups in 1983, the cull fell to as low as 15,000 harp seals two years later.

Several European governments are considering plans to ban all seal products. Britain has yet to decide its public stance, despite lobbying from animal welfare groups. Although the Canadian government claims seals are no longer skinned alive during the culls, recent eye-witness accounts claim otherwise, corroborating studies suggesting that more than four in 10 pups are still alive when hunters skin them.

However, Canada has won plaudits for how it reacted to international outrage over the culls. The government has banned the killing of 'whitecoats' - the youngest pups up to 12 days old. Now only seals who have shed their white coats at about three weeks old are killed for their black-spotted, silvery fur. Before this year's hunt, officials added an extra requirement that hunters examine the skull of the seal or touch the eyes to test for reflexes to ensure that a seal is brain dead before skinning.


TOPICS: Canada; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: animalrights; clubbingbabyseals; fur; hunting; newfoundland
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To: Skooz
So if we don't kill off thousand of seals, they eat the very food, fish, upon which we depend. You know, when man killed the wolves, he assumed the responsibilty of keeping the herds in check.

It's really that simple.

You haven't spent much time observing nature. Here's a word to look up: exacerbate

61 posted on 04/14/2004 7:31:31 PM PDT by spald
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To: spald
You don't have to snotty about it.

You assert that if baby seals were not clubbed, the seals would be so numerous as to exhaust the supply of fish in the sea, correct?

The assertion is nonsense.
62 posted on 04/14/2004 7:33:53 PM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Skooz
I'm not snotty. I'm 74 years old.

I most respectfully submit that nature is a beautiful thing to behold (look up that word also).

There are checks and balances in the system. If you remove one predator, another assumes the task.

One way or the other, another assumes the task (this could be a microbe, mammal or virus, etc).

Please forgive me my forthrightness; I meant no offense.

63 posted on 04/14/2004 7:41:26 PM PDT by spald
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To: spald
I understand nature and appreciate the checks and balances God has provided. But, this is not a case of checks and balances. This is a case of extreme cruelty to a helpless baby animal for no good reason.

No ecological function is served by killing these seals. This isn't "culling the herd" as some have suggested. The seal population has no need to be culled. This is a quick buck to be made by beating seal puppies to death. Nothing more.

I hate arguing with my elders. :0)
64 posted on 04/14/2004 7:47:21 PM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Skooz
You are not arguing now so we are at peace.

This is a cull plain and simple. Please appreciate the specific and God-given role of the predator in nature. It's natural and it is sublime.

The cubs are adorable. It makes nature's wrath that much harder to comprehend.

I don't make up the rules of nature. I just observe, interpret and marvel. Rest assured that if man did not intervene, another entity would.

It would be best to just ignore the seal cub happenstance. Any human intervention to stop the culling would certainly lead to far greater short-term hardship on the cubs, as is the normal vector.

Of these thing, I do not know why. It just is and any human intervention tends to complicate the situation with more dire circumstances for the indigenous animal population.

65 posted on 04/14/2004 8:20:47 PM PDT by spald
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To: Eurotwit
You see the thing is these baby seals are innocent creatures who don't kill anything except to survive. I am not against hunting and I am not some Ecological nut myself but this is just mass slaughter - no escape. At least in hunting the animal has the chance to run or hide and when a hunter shoots he takes the trophy home either to eat or mount and there isn't a mass slaughter on this scale and most hunters follow the rules and don't kill babies. These babies can hardly move and some big burly neanderthal with a club comes along to smash his/her skull - strip the hide off and leave the rest to rot. This is disgusting and pitiful!
66 posted on 04/15/2004 6:25:31 AM PDT by areafiftyone (Democrats = the hamster is dead but the wheel is still spinning)
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To: Long Cut
If an act contains neither honor nor dignity nor decency, it is an act that Men should condemn.

Exactly. Your entire post is very well said.

67 posted on 04/15/2004 8:41:13 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Centurion2000
I live in Texas, thank God.

So damn what! I don't care if you lived on Mars, moron.

Deal with it.

I don't have to, but your fellow "Texans" do and I'd be willing to bet that the Texans I know well, would just as soon you'd leave.

but until then other people are making a living off animal products.

You're not one of those sub-human critters that work in the French owned slaughter houses that kill horses for meat that is sent to Europe, are you? Are you what is known as a "nutter" at the slaughter house? Do they pay you in French Francs? Or do you work poultry and are just a friggen "chicken plucker"?

68 posted on 04/15/2004 8:57:44 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: elbucko
Thanks. I refined it and expanded it over here. Provoked a nice discussion, too. Head over and check it out.

You know, I'm not against all animal harvest; I like steak and lobster as much as the next guy. And I am quite aware that we as a species are certainly not saints when it comes to our treatment of even those animals we breed for food. But we HAVE to draw a line somewhere. If we can't in such an obvious and self-evident case of brutal cruelty as this, then what does that make us?

Don't believe that crap about "prtecting the fish stocks", either. The seals do not eat anywhere nearly as many as are caught every year. The reason that the fishermen are having lower catches is that THEY overfish their grounds. Now, to make up the difference caused by their OWN overfishing, they're wastefully and brutally killing yet ANOTHER species. Sickening.

69 posted on 04/15/2004 9:07:34 AM PDT by Long Cut
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To: spald
"This is a cull plain and simple."

It is not. In a true, humane cull, such things as poisoned darts would be used. The targets would be adults, breeding-aged females mostly, and older males. The temptation to make a quick buck would be removed by strict regulation and policing of the process.

Not here. Here we have a situation where there is money to be made. So, we kill infants (better coats!) with a club so as not to ruin the hides. Oh, and if it's not dead, well, skin it anyway! Forget the adults. They make up some Bravo Sierra about protecting the fishing stocks (from their NATURAL predators, LOL!) that they themselves have depleted to provide a thin cover. The whole enterprise is sleazy beyond belief.

it's no better, really, than when the Zimbabwean government claimed it needed to "cull" elephants...which it did with machine guns and then hacked out the tusks, which were sold for ivory, gaining big $$$. They killed entire family units and left most of them to rot.

70 posted on 04/15/2004 9:17:35 AM PDT by Long Cut
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To: syriacus
"I thought the Canadians were supposed to be kinder than we are."

They are, they are much kinder to terrorists....not seals however.
71 posted on 04/15/2004 9:41:22 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: spald
Please appreciate the specific and God-given role of the predator in nature....

Clubbing seals for money is not "predation", it's degradation. A predator eats what it kills in order to survive. Predators do not parade around in the skin of what it has killed. The only animal that kills more than it needs and then wears the skins beyond the necessity of survival in the elements, is Man.

BTW, this so-called culling is excused on the grounds that the seals are eating all the fish, but the article makes mention of the fact the reduction in fish population may be due to over-fishing. Could it be that the "clubbers" are the very same fishermen that deplete their own resource and then blame the depletion of fish on the seals so they can go club the seals to make up for their lack of husbandry.

What was the fish-to-seal balance before man came along? Someone is not telling the truth, ignoring known facts, or both. The clubbers probably vote "Labor" in Canada.

72 posted on 04/15/2004 9:43:55 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Skooz
"Clubbing them to make coats"

Coats are a by-product. They are clubbing them so that you can have cod at Red Lobster next week, or did you want to donate yours to the seals?
73 posted on 04/15/2004 9:44:17 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: ASTM366
"Bunch of bloodthirsty killers living up there"

More likely a bunch of people trying to make a living.
74 posted on 04/15/2004 9:46:36 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: Long Cut
Here we have a situation where there is money to be made.

And votes to be secured, as well as the provincial and national treasury to be enriched on taxes collected from the clubbers.

75 posted on 04/15/2004 9:47:52 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: oldcomputerguy
They are clubbing them so that you can have cod at Red Lobster next week,

Oh, please. This "hunt" has nothing whatsoever to do with preserving fish that would otherwise be eaten by the seals. They would have to slaughter far far more than they are to have any effect on the cod population.

These seals are being bludgeoned for one reason: People in Ukraine and East Europe like the coats. The rest of the seal is discarded.

76 posted on 04/15/2004 9:52:14 AM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Long Cut
" Their cruel slaughter is entirely pointless "

You must have missed the part about each one eating a ton of fish a year when they're grown.
77 posted on 04/15/2004 9:53:47 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: Pikamax
man oh man I'd love to taste one of those little things.
78 posted on 04/15/2004 10:01:36 AM PDT by isom35
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To: Long Cut
The seals do not eat anywhere nearly as many as are caught every year. The reason that the fishermen are having lower catches is that THEY over fish their grounds.

I think so too. Whatever number that is cited as being the "tonnage" of fish that each seal will eat is likely to be a gross exaggeration. The "Seal Clubbing" is simply welfare. Welfare that the government of Canada gets a cut of, rather than having to pay out to the poor starving fish goons that crap in their own nest.

79 posted on 04/15/2004 10:48:02 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Skooz
"They would have to slaughter far far more than they are to have any effect on the cod population"

Since ordinary fishing is killing the cod population already, anything they eat is something that we are not eating.
80 posted on 04/15/2004 12:22:33 PM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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