Here’s a first-hand account of the kill by Mark Glover of Respect for Animals and Humane Society International. Here’s a short extract:
The hunt has been going on for years. It takes place in areas of the country where there are a number of marginal constituencies, and in the end it boils down to crude electoral arithmetic. The majority of Canadians across the country may want the hunt banned, but because of key marginal seats in fishing constituencies in the east, it would take a brave politician to stand up and call for an end to it.
Sealers are fishermen, and as such they are all members of a vocal and powerful fishing union. But the annual seal hunt doesn’t create extra jobs for them. The hunts only last four or five days and, though the numbers vary from year to year, no more than 5,000 fishermen go out on each hunt.
On top of this, a sealer gets less than 5% of his income from sealing. Any money made goes to the boat owners who charge up to 70% of the fishermen’s income just for taking them out on the boats. Hunting seals is certainly not anyone’s main source of income, and it’s a distortion by the Canadian government to try to make people believe it is.
There’s still a notion that seals should be killed to help with the recovery of fish stocks. This is scientifically bogus. Back in 1992, when the Canadian cod stocks collapsed, 40,000 fishermen fell out of work overnight. The Canadian authorities, who had overseen the demise of that cod population, needed to blame something and they blamed the seals. That there are too many seals around and they impact on the fish is an idea that still persists today.
The seal killing is now worse than ever. Looking back to the late 80s, when the anti-sealing campaign was previously at its peak, the number of deaths was not as high as it is now. I worked for Greenpeace at that point and I clearly remember that the quotas set for seals were around 180,000. This year the quota is 275,000.
