Canadian Seal Hunt 2006 – Eyewitness Account
26 March 2006
by Mark Glover, Director, Respect for Animals and Humane Society International (UK) – off Cape Breton
We had been surveying the Gulf of St Lawrence for several days earlier this week, looking for the harp seal nursery, but the ice had broken up and all that remained were small pans of ice, holding individual seals or small groups; our concern was that many of the pups, not yet being proficient at swimming, had drowned. Those that had survived were only living on borrowed time, the sealers were on their way.
Because of the ice conditions, the hunt was due to start in the north east of the Gulf, further on from where we’d been only a few weeks before, to visit the newborn seal pups, with Heather and Paul McCartney. This time, helicopters weren’t going to be much use, landing on ice this thin was going to be near impossible, so we organised a boat to take us to the killing floes.
At 6am Saturday morning, the official start of the hunt, we set off in a small boat with two inflatables. Boats carrying the sealers were already panning out searching for seals.
The sealers were clubbing and shooting the seal pups now; if they could get out onto the thinning ice they would club the pups over the head; or they would shoot at them from the boat, hook the body and drag it onboard. I have seen several seals being shot and left on the ice to die; I’ve seen a sealer take three shots at a seal, then just move on.
We were in our small inflatable boats, and at one point a sealer flung seal intestines towards us, they hit the boat and sunk away into the icy water. Then another boat swerved towards us, the sealers swearing at us.
I saw a sealer shoot at a seal from his boat, then another sealer scrambled onto the tiny ice pan, bring down his hakapik, a wooden club with metal hook attached, on the seal pups head, hook it and drag it back to the boat. They were skinning seals on the boats, or sometimes on the ice itself. Then the carcasses were either left on the ice, or just floating in the water. It was gruesome.
The sealers kept moving on, from one ice pan to the next, and the process started all over again – all that was left on the ice was a splattering of blood.
It’s just horrific, there’s blood all across the ice; carcasses of newly skinned seals just left floating in the water. And the seals are so helpless, they are no more than about a month old; as they can’t swim yet they can’t get away from their killers, there is no where to go for them; they are sitting targets; it’s bloody carnage.
For further information, images or to speak to the team one the ice, please contact:
Shely Bryan, Respect for Animals
mobile: 07710 148957
email: mail@shelybryan.net