Blog  /  Category  /  seal-hunt

15 April 2011, 30 miles south east of St Anthony, Newfoundland

We wake to foggy weather, but our helicopter pilot says he is willing to see if we can find gaps in the fog in order to get up to St Anthony, an hour and a half’s flight away, where we can refuel before heading offshore to look for sealing boats. The flight is difficult and the pilot has to inch his way along the coastline, but we eventually make it. Refueling takes 30 mins and then we are off again, the helicopter straining under the weight of 500 litres of fuel. We head due east and are over the icy ocean within minutes. Large banks of fog obscure our way forward, but we find a gap and fly further. The cold ocean dotted with bits of ice stretches forever beneath us. Luckily our camera system suspended beneath the helicopter has a massive zoom and the camera operator soon locates a sealing boat on the horizon, which we fly towards. The boat is working its way through the loose ice, the marksman on the cabin shooting every seal pup he can see, staining the ice with their blood. 

A seal pup just ahead of us is shot, but the bullet only wounds him and he starts writhing in pain. He lifts his head and opens his mouth, and while we can’t hear him 1000 feet up in the air in a helicopter, clearly it is a cry of agony. The sealers, who must have heard the cry, show no pity and the boat moves towards him, a sealer leaning over the side brandishing a gaff, a long wooden pole with a sharpened steel hook on the end. The poor seal bites at the gaff, but the sealer hooks him in the side of the face and hauls him aboard, his mouth opening and shutting.
The sealer dumps the pup onto a pile of bloody carcasses on the deck, which is awash in blood and seal body parts. As we are about shift the camera’s focus to another seal on the ice, I see him lift his head and cry again. The sealer grabs him by the flipper and drags him off the pile of carcasses to the other side of the boat; again he lifts his head and cries as the sealer reaches for his club and smashes it into the baby seal’s head again and again. 

The helicopter PA system, normally alive with voices directing the pilot and camera operator, is still for a second as we all try to process the awful scene we have just witnessed. If this is what sealers are doing to seals when they know they are being filmed, one can only imagine what goes on out of sight of our cameras. We continue filming as the marksman shoots more seals, many of whom are only wounded and then gaffed and dragged on board whilst still conscious. All because the sealers are too lazy to jump off the boat onto the ice to make sure the seal is dead before hooking them with the gaff. Yet the Canadian government still has the audacity to call this a well regulated and humane hunt. Notably, there was not one enforcement boat in the area, nor at any time during the three days of filming we did.

With the fog closing in and fuel running low, we turn for St Anthony airport where we refuel before heading for home. Its our last day of filming, but the hunt continues……..

The 2011 southern Gulf of St Lawrence seal hunt officially began on Sunday 27th March, but got off to a slow start due to poor weather. Unfortunately, once the storms in the region cleared up, four boats set sail for the only area in the southern gulf where there was ice and the few pups that had survived this year’s record low ice cover and recent storms. As of 1 April these four boats had killed 966 seal pups and were back in port, signaling the end of the southern gulf hunt. Normally tens of thousands of pups are slaughtered for their pelts in the southern gulf, but depressed markets resulting from the EU ban and the Canadian government’s inability to find new markets is clearly taking its toll.

The next phase of the hunt is due to start between 8-12 Apr off the north east coast of Newfoundland where there the ice conditions and numbers of seal pups lead us to believe that the kill levels will be significantly higher. Certainly, this year’s record quota of 400,000 pups set by the Canadian government, indicates a desire on their part for a greater death toll. We will be on the ground in Newfoundland to gather evidence of the inherent cruelty of the hunt, which we will use to shut down markets for seal products.

Currently there’s confusion about why the quota for the seal hunt is the highest since 1971 when there are clear indications that the international markets for seal products are in decline and the second year of diminished ice means a large number of seal pups will drown as the ice melts before they are able to swim.  MEP David Martin, who campaigned successfully for a ban on the import of Canadian seal products into the EU, addressed these issues and the political nature of the quota decision in a comment piece which can be read here. 

As if the seal hunt wasn’t bad enough, the past few years have seen lower and lower ice cover as a result of global warming. Harp seals rely on solid ice upon which to give birth to their pups and nurse them until they are able to survive in open water. The ice is so bad this year that Canadian government biologists are predicting 100 percent mortality for seal pups in some key whelping areas.  The ecological impact of mass slaughter combined with high natural mortality could pose a serious threat to the Canadian seal population. More information on the dangers faced by harp seals giving birth on shore can be found here and here.