Tempers Flare At Annual Seal Hunt

Sealers took to the thawing ice floes off the Atlantic Ocean on the first day of Canada's contentious seal hunt Saturday, sparking confrontations with animal rights activists who claim the annual cull is cruel.

Protesters had to dodge flying seal guts pitched at them by angry hunters as tempers flared on the first day of the spring leg of the world's largest seal slaughter.

It's hot and bloody work for seal hunters as summer-like conditions on the Gulf of St. Lawrence sent temperatures soaring under clear blue skies.

Observers on the fishing boat, the Strait Signet, said about 20 seal hunt vessels were in the Cabot Strait off northern Cape Breton on Saturday, and hunters were clubbing seals floating on small pans of ice.

By mid-morning, the temperature was already 15 degrees. Hunt protesters are complaining that the ice is fast disappearing in the mild weather and there will be a high natural seal mortality.

Seal pups cannot survive in the water until they are several weeks old.

Reporters and animal rights activists tried to get as close as permitted to the hunt on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but their presence infuriated 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.

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 are able to sell their pelts, mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as their blubber for oil.

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

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

Animal rights activists, particularly the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, 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 traveled to the Gulf of St. Lawrence two weeks ago to pose with the newborn pups. They called the hunt "a stain on the character of the Canadian people," and urged the government to turn to ecotourism in the region instead.

French film legend Brigitte Bardot came to Ottawa earlier this week. She said she was stunned that a developed nation would still let such a practice continue, three decades after she first came to Canada to frolic with some pups in an attempt to end the slaughter.

The unseasonably mild temperatures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have made the ice thin and many of the harp seal pups appear to have drowned, prompting protesters to call for the quota of 325,000 kills to be lowered to compensate for the natural deaths.

"Canada is being irresponsible by allowing so many seals to be killed," said Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society, who has observed the hunt for eight years.

Veteran animal-rights activist John Grandy, on board a plane chartered by the Humane Society to monitor the hunt and report any abuses, also said much fewer pups were on the ice this year.

"That tells us many have died, they fell through before they could swim," Grandy said.

Roger Simon, spokesman for the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, disputed concerns about a high natural seal mortality this year.

"There will always be some mortality and some drowning," Simon told The Canadian Press.

Aboriginal and Inuit hunters began the commercial kill in November in Canada's frozen Arctic waters; the spring leg will move off the coast of Newfoundland in April.

Martin Dufour, a helicopter pilot from Quebec who was ferrying the Humane Society protesters out to the ice, said he was not opposed to the hunt, only the way in which the seals are killed.

"I don't know why they use the picks," he said. "It's a savage way and the seals are too young."

The hunters prefer to use spiked clubs called hakapiks to crush the seals' skulls, rather than possibly damage the pelts with bullet holes.