Seal hunt spurs confrontations

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE – Infuriated sealers trying to fend off animal-rights activists flung seal guts at the inflatable boat filled with protesters – in the first of what promised to be many days of angry confrontations between the two groups.

Saturday was the first day of Canada’s contentious seal hunt on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and reporters and activists tried to get as close as permitted, but their presence angered sealers hunting for scarce animals on small, drifting ice pans.

At one point, a sealing vessel charged up to a small inflatable boat carrying protesters, and a fisherman flung seal intestines at the observers.

“They threw carcasses at our Zodiac, and they came rushing at us in their boat and tried to capsize us in the wake,” Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society said. “This is standard behavior out here; the sealers feel that they’re completely above the law.”

The fishermen in the isolated island communities of Quebec and Newfoundland say the hunt supplements their meager 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 $14.5 million in revenue last year, after some 325,000 seals were slaughtered. Fishermen sell their pelts, mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil, earning about $60 per seal.

The federal government maintains Canada’s seal population is abundant, with a population of nearly 6 million in the Arctic north and maritime provinces.

Regulations require the sealers to quickly kill the seals with a pick or bullet to the brain. The pups also must be over 2 to 3 weeks old and have shed their white downy fur before being killed.