Canada seal hunt sparks angry confrontations

The opening days of Canada’s East Coast seal hunt were fraught with frustration, bad tempers and violent acts on the rapidly thinning ice of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Hunt protesters with the Humane Society of the United States said they were shaken up yesterday when a sealing boat rammed their small, inflatable Zodiac boat, damaging the vessel’s propeller.

“The hunters may be frustrated and I know they don’t want us documenting their activities, but that doesn’t give them the right to risk peoples’ lives,” said Humane Society spokeswoman Rebecca Aldworth, who was on the Zodiac when it was rammed.

On Saturday, the opening day of the hunt, protesters and news reporters observing the slaughter had to dodge seal guts hurled into their Zodiac by swearing sealers.

On both days, protesters were following the sealing boats, documenting the hunt with video cameras.

Fisheries spokesman Marcel Boudreau said just over 3,000 seals were taken on Saturday, an unusually small number for opening day. He said close to 50 sealing boats were on the water.

Boudreau said most of the killing is being done with rifles because it is not safe for sealers to walk on the ice and club seals.

The ice in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence has broken up into small ice pans and chunks.

“It will be a very slow hunt this spring,” Boudreau said.

Veteran sealer Jean-Claude LaPierre, spokesman for the sealers’ association on the Iles de la Madeleine, said he was not surprised to learn that some sealers have taken action against protesters.

“We’re so frustrated by them,” he said.

The fishermen in the isolated island communities of Quebec and Newfoundland say the hunt supplements their meagre winter incomes, particularly since cod stocks have dwindled dramatically during the past decade. They resent animal-rights activists, who they say have little understanding of their centuries-old traditions.

The hunt brought $13.84m (€10m) in revenue last year, after some 325,000 seals were slaughtered. Fishermen are able to sell the pelts, mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil.

The federal government maintains Canada’s seal population is healthy and abundant, with a population of nearly six million in the Arctic north and maritime provinces.

Animal rights activists claim the fishermen often skin the seals alive or leave some pups to die if they are not immediately knocked unconscious.

The Humane Society has had high-profile allies in celebrities like Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills McCartney, who travelled to the Gulf of St. Lawrence two weeks ago to pose with the newborn pups.