Paul Watson, Founder and Executive Director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Board Member Harpseals.org
Maritimes has become a glorified welfare system. The Maritimes are now the most heavily subsidized economic region in the world. We would be better off and we would actually save more money to pay the fishermen not to fish and seal. As for jobs. There has never been a guarantee of jobs in a world of diminishing resources. Newfoundland is the victim of its own actions in violating the three basic laws of ecology - The law of diversity, the law of interdependence and the law of finite resources.
Canadian Seafood Boycott
The Most Potent Strategy to End the Annual Seal Hunt in Canada
Canada is the number one supplier of fish and seafood imports to the United States. In 2003, Canada exported 67% of its total fish and seafood exports to this market at a value of $3.3 billion. Canada’s fish and seafood exports to the European Union recorded the highest growth rate among the major markets, increasing by 21% to $446 million in 2003.
Help Urge the Red Lobster to Join the Boycott
This large chain of restaurants may be the single largest importer of Canadian seafood in the world.
Go to Sea Shepherd's "Red Lobster Public Interest Message
Help enlist the Darden Group, owners of the Red Lobster to stop supporting the sealers!
Darden Restaurants, Inc, headquartered in Orlando, Fla., is the world’s largest company-owned and operated restaurant company with almost $6.7 billion in annual sales and through subsidiaries, the company employs approximately 180,000 employees and owns and operates more than 1,700 restaurants including Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52. (See for yourself)
Get the Code to Post this Petition on your Website! GO!
Urge your local grocer to join the Canadian Seafood Boycott GO!
Why We Boycott Canadian Seafood
The Canadian sealers are fishermen. Sealing is an off-season activity for them, a way to earn a few bucks before the start of the fishing season. The Canadian seafood boycott allows us to pressure sealers to stop killing seals - or risk losing their main source of income.
Many seafood companies lobby for the seal slaughter. One of them (the Barry Group) owns the second largest seal skin processing company (Atlantic Marine Products) and therefore has a direct reason to support the seal hunt. Others still believe that they'll catch more fish if they kill off the seals. And those companies that don't actively lobby for the seal hunt either quietly support the massacres or are too timid to challenge government policies. The Canadian seafood boycott will encourage all Canadian fishing companies to demand an end to the seal hunt.
The Canadian seafood boycott in the U.S. is powerful because Americans purchase about 70% of the seafood exports from Canada. That adds up to about CAN$3 billion. This is far more than the value of the seal hunt (about CAN$16 million from seal pelts). Just making a dent in the sales of Canadian seafood here in the U.S. will pressure the Canadian seafood industry to demand an end to the seal hunt.
Learn more & see the list of common species caught by Canadian fishermen at Harpseals.org
All Canadian seafood is being boycotted, but seafood from Atlantic Canada, where the seal hunt takes place, is a special focus. One of the major Canadian seafood exports is snow crab.
By boycotting tourism to Canada, especially to Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands of Quebec, seal hunt opponents can pressure sealers and their supporters to change their stance on the seal-hunt.
From IFAW
"More than 660 probable violations of Canada’s Marine Mammal Regulations to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. These abuses include skinning or bleeding live seals, stockpiling dead and dying animals, dragging live seals across the ice with sharpened steel hooks and shooting seals and leaving them to suffer. To date, not a single charge has been laid in response.
* 79% of the sealers did not check to see if an animal was dead before skinning it.
* In 40% of the kills a sealer had to strike the seal a second time, presumably because it was still conscious after the first blow or shot.
* 42% of killed seals examined were found to have minimal or no fractures, suggesting a high probability that these seals were conscious when skinned." GO!
Alternatives for Sealers
Sealers earn most (about 95%) of their living as fishermen. As they deplete the oceans by over-fishing, destroying habitat with bottom trawlers, and indiscriminately killing sea life with long liners and other fishing technologies, their income from fishing is likely to decline. Sealing never has offered a lucrative alternative or supplement to the fishermen's income. Most of the proceeds from sealing go to boat captains and seal skin processors.
Nevertheless, sealers have been offered alternatives, such as 'seal brushing'. Each individual hair follicle of the whitecoat seal pups is hollow, keeping the babies warm and happy in the subzero temperatures. As the babies continue to their second stage of growth, they begin to molt and lose this outer layer of hair. This is when they can be easily brushed and the hair collected for bedding and other applications. Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have attempted on multiple occasions to introduce this idea to the Canadian sealers, even finding a businessman who offered more money for each brushed seal than the sealers could make from the pelt. Unfortunately, the idea was rejected time after time.
The sealers reasoning for rejection? As one sealer put it in 1999 in the Magdelein Islands, "Seals are meant to be clubbed, not brushed. We don't want nothing to do with no faggoty idea like that".
Another alternative for the sealers is seal tourism. Some sealers already make money this way - before the sealing starts. This could supplement their income more if the seal hunt ended. Many who know about the slaughter choose not to support the sealing communities with tourism as long as the seal hunt continues.
Learn more at Harpseals.org
The Canadian Government fervently defends the practice of hunting baby seals, claiming it is as humane as any other type of slaughter and that it is strictly monitored. Rebecca Aldworth is a native born Newfoundlander who has worked tirelessly at ending this brutal practice. Each year she is present to witness and document the brutal seal hunt and here is an excerpt of what she has seen:
"Not to be outdone, the second sealer grabbed his hakapik and clubbed the baby seal once more. He flipped her over and began to cut her open -- only to roll her back over so the first sealer could club her three more times. This poor baby seal was clubbed thirteen times in total.
Urge the Olympic Committee to Help End the Canadian Seal Slaughter GO!
As a citizen of Canada and resident of Vancouver I was relieved by a new campaign highlighting the cruel seal hunt with the 2010 Olympic Logo. We need to use opportunities like this to capitalize on the sleeping public attention. Many Canadians in my area are dumbfounded when I tell them there is a Seal Hunt on the other side of Canada. This is the extent to which our media ignores this issue and Peta has highlighted one of Canada’s worst shames in relation to one of Canada’s most extravagant expense’s.
-Amanda Daniell, WFL Endangered Stream Live, Canadian Contributor
The European Commission says that Canada, Greenland, and Namibia account for about 60 per cent of the 900,000 seals hunted each year although Canada is the biggest source.
The European Union is working on a complete ban of seal product imports.
The European Union initially banned imports of pelts from whitecoat seal pups (pups under about 2 weeks of age, before the molting stage) in 1983. This contributed to the near-destruction of the sealing industry. However, the Canadian government and sealing industry soon exploited a loophole in this law.
Updates regarding the EU Ban of Seal Products:
EU panel approves ban on import of seal products:
The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposed ban April 2. The European Council would then cast its decision on the matter, likely in June. "Canada and Greenland have warned the EU that they could challenge such a ban before the World Trade Organization." Read article at International Herald Tribune
" Canadian fisheries ambassador Loyola Sullivan concedes there will be some type of ban, but whether Canadian seal pelts and other products will be exempt from it is still up for debate."- The Canadiam Press
"The draft law would allow the import of seal products, including skin, meat, fat and oils, from countries that can guarantee their hunting practices are "consistent with high animal-welfare standards" and that the animals are killed swiftly without undue suffering. Special exemptions would be allowed for Canada's Inuit." -The Parliment
I n Scotland fishermen can shoot seals all year round. Incredibly, no-one knows how many seals are being killed - because there is no requirement for seal killings to be recorded. However, it is estimated that thousands of seals are shot by fishermen and fish farm employees or contractors around Scotland’s coastline every year.
"Namibia now remains the only country on earth to round up nursing baby seals still suckling on their mother's milk, driving them in-land away from the safety of the sea, and as they attempt to flee alongside their mothers back to its safety are clubbed and stabbed to death by rows of as many as 100 part-time migrant workers - everyday between July 1 and November 15, each year. Vomiting up their mother's milk as they slowly die. On just two mainland seal colonies where 75% of this species unnaturally remains. Where the Namibian government grants 3 sealing concession holders the right to club these protected wildlife seals to death."
Seals Need Your Help - Please Join Us On March 15
The Day Of Action For Seals in Canada
In March, the world’s largest annual slaughter of marine mammals will resume, and the seals in Canada need your help! Please join WFLF and IDA for a Day of Action for Seals in Canada on March 15. Thousands of harp seals will be clubbed, hooked and skinned to death for their fur - unless you speak loudly enough to stop it!
What: Demo against seal slaughter in Canada
When: March 15, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Where: Canadian Consulate General – 550 South Hope Street - Los Angeles, California
"Save the Baby Seals"
WITH
Featured Guest: Ian Robichaud
OVERVIEW
Canada's Annual Seal Hunt is the Largest Slaughter of Marine Mammals in the World. The Canadian seal massacre took the lives of over 220,000 seal pups in 2008. Based on the government’s allotted quota numbers for the past 8 years, these are the highest quotas in the history of the seal hunt. Scientific research suggests that these numbers are unsustainable.
The slaughter of seals in Canada has taken place for hundreds of years. Today, this annual ritual offers relatively little economic value to the sealers, and even to the sealing boat captains (whose take is usually 50%), of which many stayed home this in 2008.
Four sealers were killed and four sealing vessels destroyed in the treacherous icy waters in 2008. The Canadian Coast Guard rescued several sealers (at Canadian taxpayers' expense), but some sealers died in the attempted rescue.
Harp seal pups are famous for their big black eyes and fluffy white fur. These are their trademarks in their first two weeks of life. But these beautiful and gentle creatures have the unfortunate status of annually suffering the largest slaughter of any marine mammal species on
the planet.
Every spring, great numbers of these seals are born on the stark ice floes off the Canadian Atlantic coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the east of Quebec.
Commonly referred to as “whitecoats”, Their captivating images have been captured in a thousand ways and distributed around the world, making them among the most recognizable and well known of species of wild animal on earth. It’s sad and ironic to point out that all this recognition does nothing to help their plight as these seal pups are the victims of a brutal annual massacre in a politically-driven, propaganda-supported slaughter.
Every year, when the time is "right", as soon as the ice conditions permit and the seal pups start shedding their fuzzy white coats, about 2,000 to 6,000 Canadian fishermen head for the floes onboard sealing vessels, and proceed to club, shoot, and skin hundreds of thousands of baby harp and hooded seals. All of the sealers perform regular fishing duties, 95% of the year. Most of them come from in Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands of Quebec.
Although there are many "humane" laws on the books for killing the baby seals, rarely, if ever, are any of these laws ever followed, except in the rare case a camera is rolling. It has been well established that following the “Humane Law” takes too much time, thus costing the sealers money. Such brutal behavior exhibits the men to be desensitized to killing feelings, in the highest sense of the word.
About 95% of the seals killed in the commercial seal 'hunt' are no more than 3 months old.
The government calls this massacre, "harvesting" and regulates the hunt using the term "fishery" for their numbers.
Harpseals.org provides extensive information on all aspects of the seal hunt, so that individuals can understand what takes place, when the seal hunt occurs, how the sealers kill the seals, where the killing occurs, who the sealers are, and why the killing continues.
Harpseals.org strives to highlight various viewpoints of the seal hunt and then ask the viewers to make their own decisions and in effort to be fair, links are even provided to various pro-sealing sites, plus they offer an open forum where sealers themselves are encouraged to engage.
Harpseals.org works tirelessly to end the slaughter and provide information and assistance to seal activists all over the world. Their primary strategy to end the annual Canadian seal hunt is the Canadian seafood boycott. This boycott puts pressure on the sealers themselves and the industry behind the slaughter.
Ian Robichaud; lifelong animal lover and activist, founder of the anti-seal hunt focus group Harpseals.org in 2003. I have been to the hunting grounds and experienced the seals 2 times- one in 2003, one week prior to the seal hunt beginning, and the second time in 2005, during the seal hunt, onboard the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat.
"To me, these magnificent seal beings are more than just 'another threatened animal species'... they are symbolic of a much greater phenomenon indeed: the future well-being of our planet itself."
OTTAWA – The Honourable Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, today issued the following statement in defence of Canadian sealers:
The Government of Canada is disappointed by the news that Liberal Senator Mac Harb will introduce legislation calling for a ban on the seal hunt. This proposal undermines Canada’s ongoing efforts abroad to defend the legitimacy of the seal hunt at a time when Canada is facing proposals to ban seal products in Europe and elsewhere.
But most importantly, it questions the right of hard working Canadian sealers to provide a lawful livelihood for their families.
Besides having been a source of food, fuel and shelter for hundreds of years, seal products continue to be commodities sought after by consumers in Canada, Europe and Asia. As such, the seal hunt is an economically viable activity and it represents a valuable source of income for thousands of individuals and their families in remote towns and villages, at a time of year when few other economic opportunities exist. To deny them this basic right would be irresponsible.
I, and our government, will remain steadfast in our commitment to defending the legitimate economic activities of Canadians and will work with our provincial, territorial and industry partners to maintain market access for Canadian seal products.
It is my hope that Senator Mac Harb can appreciate the hardship his proposal will cause and stand with us in support of Canadian sealers.
###
CONTACT MINISTER SHEA AND
TELL HER SHE IS WRONG!
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has the power to stop the hunt.
Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, is responsible for setting seal quotas and prosecuting violations of the Marine Mammal Regulations.
Canadian Residents
Please call the Prime Minister's office and voice your disgust at the Conservative Party of Canada supporting this cruel hunt. Advise the person you speak with that you will not vote Conservative in the next election if the hunt is not ended.
SUPPORT "HARB SEAL BILL!"
Send automated email in support of Canadian Senator Harb who's proposed bill to end the seal hunt! (IFAW) GO!
"Each year on small islands in Nova Scotia, thousands of baby grey seals are bludgeoned with crude wooden bats by fishermen who bitterly blame them for the collapse of groundfish stocks. Until last year this annual slaughter occurred in secret. Last year, world attention focused upon the plight of Nova Scotia's grey seals when the provincial government allowed sealers to access Hay island, a protected wilderness area, and slaughter up to 2,500 baby grey seals. When sealers left the island, 1,261 pups were dead and a few unmoulted pups remained. Humane Society International and Atlantic Canadian Anti-Sealing Coalition captured the cruelty of Nova Scotia's grey seal hunt on film for the first time and showed that footage to the world.
Although no longer Nova Scotia's dirty little secret, grey seals are still killed in a horrifyingly cruel manner. This week 200 defenceless grey seal pups were bludgeoned to death on Hay Island, despite a lack of markets for their skins. Many believe the grey seal hunt is not a commercial hunt, but rather a cull demanded by fishermen to exterminate what they consider to be competitors for their fish.
This is Nova Scotia's shame. This is Canada's other seal hunt. The slaughter of baby greys."
For 140 days, staring July 1st, the Namibian government permits the killing of about 85,000 nursing baby Cape Fur seals...on the pretext of creating employment for 120 unskilled workers living in cardboard shacks near the seal colony.
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert-SA has set-up private Seal Rescue and Rehabilitation facilities in Hout Bay Harbour over the past 10 - years. Its is self-funded.
Each year I try to take in a select group of babies from different effected seal colonies, in order to further and pioneer the ability to successfully raise a group of babies in order to eventually establish the means of re-populating these extinct seal islands.
-Francois Hugo
Take Action:
1. Sign Petition to End over 600 years of clubbing Cape Fur Seals
2. Sign Petition to Bans Guns from Sea and Save Fur Seals of Africa
3. Boycott South African seafood (including S. African squid, pilchards, tuna, lobster, hake, abalone, mackerel, monk fish). Look for 'Product of South Africa' labels in the U.S.
4. Make a Much Needed Donation:
To mail a donation directly to Seal Alert-SA:SEAL ALERT-SABOX 221POSTNETHOUT BAY7872HEREWITH IS FURTHER DETAILS FOR BANK TRANSFERS:
ZAR is South AfricanRand
More information to be able to send the money via internet:
SEAL ALERT-SA ACC : 911 2201 321
BRANCH CODE : 632 005
SWIFT CODE : ABSAZAJJ
BANK : ABSA
SA NAT.CLEARING CODE
BIC: (SWIFT-CODE) ABSAZAJJ
Bank name : ABSA
Address : DELPHI ARCH OFFICE PARK, RAATS DRIVE, TABLE VIEW
City/code : TABLE VIEW, 7439
Country : South Africa
ABOUT SEALS ALERTS SA
“Seal Alert-SA was established in 1999, as a direct hands-on organization to address the imbalances, cruelty and abuse that has plagued this species for well over 600 years. Our primary roles are investigation, rescue and in the wild rehabilitation, free of all forms of confinement. Our ultimate goal is the re-establishment of the ecology path, this species has been diverted away from. We seek an effective and meaningful, protected natural balanced marine environment, that is not based on unnatural animal segregation or exclusion policies or over protection of one species to the detriment of another”. Francois Hugo
"Save the Baby Seals"
Listen Now!
"Save the Baby Seals"
Join us together with our guest, the founder of HarpSeals.org Ian Robichaud for an educational and enlightening discussion about the looming slaughter of another 300,000 baby seals.
Every year Canadian fishermen shoot, bludgeon and skin over 300,000 baby seals; many spend hours dying in their own blood. Many are skinned alive.
This is an industrial hunt by the Canadian government and pushed by the Canadian Seafood Corporations. Fishermen earn only 5% of their income this way; the other 95% is earned while they over fish and deplete the N Atlantic oceans. The Canadian fishing industry has displayed little regard for sustainability and they are totally ignoring the direct impact they've had on the complete collapse of the Cod stocks just a few year ago. These fishermen use the baby seals as their scapegoats; an excuse to slaughter hundreds of thousands of baby seals. This is one of the world's most horrific examples of pardoned criminal cruelty.
This slaughter can be stopped and we can stop it. Please listen and take action to help.
Hosted by Katia Louise assisted by Amanda Daniel, with Diva Vega live in the chat room as the Coordinator for Simulcast Discussions.
IFAW's Report on the Economics of the seal Hunt GO!
Politics and Propaganda
The main reason behind the continued killing is for the pelts, but the full truth is much more complex. A few words that come to mind when attempting to explain the seal 'hunt': vanity, greed, political scapegoats, pride/ stubbornness and bloodlust.
The basic travesty of making scapegoats of the seals is as follows: due to years of overfishing, inept DFO management of fisheries and ocean ecosystems, and unenforced regulations, Canada suffered a total collapse of the once bountiful cod fishery on their Eastern seaboard in the early 1990's.
The DFO manages the seal hunt and other and commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, and indigenous fishing and sealing for all of Canada. It promulgates rules and regulations for sealers and is tasked with enforcing those rules.
The DFO has failed to lay charges despite hundreds of violations of seal hunt regulations that were documented by independent observers including those from IFAW and HSUS.
As the manager of fisheries, the DFO created and enforced regulations that eventually led to the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery. The DFO has been citedfor mismanagement of this and other fisheries. Additional Key points about the DFO Seal Hunt
The seal hunt is SUBSIDIZED by the government via Canadian citizen tax dollars for icebreaker services, spotter planes, marketing research, tax breaks, etc.
The various "independent" studiesthey perform are actually paid results, and are never peer reviewed and often nebulous.
According to various polls, it apparent that the majority of Canadians oppose the seal hunt.
The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is Canada's Central Propaganda Arm in Promoting Sealing
The DFO has created a political and propaganda campaign to promote sealing. This campaign, paid for by Canadian taxpayers, involves DFO propaganda ministers, such as Phil Jenkins, opinion polls of Canadians, pressures on members of Parliament, trade missions, and challenges to trade bans.
If polls show that the majority of Canadian citizens are against the hunt, why don't they just stop it with a vote?
The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans is a bureaucracy run primarily by Newfoundlanders. They set the policy. Politicians have basically rubber-stamped the wishes of the bureaucrats. Most of the Fisheries Ministers have hailed from Newfoundland. Another problem is that there is much competition between the political parties to control Newfoundland and any party that opposes the seal hunt is out of the running. Therefore the parties have all agreed to support the hunt, leaving no alternatives for people who are opposed to the hunt. Even the Green Party of Newfoundland supports the seal kill for fear of losing votes.
Rebecca Aldworth, Newfoundland native; Director of Canadian Wildlife Issues for The HSUS
"Contrary to public perception,
Newfoundland's fishing industry has never been wealthier in history. This is because of the rapid expansion of the snow crab and other shellfish industries. Today, snow crabs account for half the landed value of Newfoundland's fishery. The seal hunt, in comparison, is only 2 percent. Even cod, thought to be close to extinction, continues to amount to 8 percent of the landed value of the fishery - four times the value of the seal hunt. Sealing is an off-season activity conducted by fishermen from Canada's east coast. Though more than 90 percent of sealers are from Newfoundland, the Newfoundland government itself estimates there are only about 4000 active sealers in any given year (the Canadian Sealers Association estimated only 2500). That means out of a population of more than half a million people, less than one percent of
Newfoundlanders participate in the sealing industry. Individual fishermen who do participate in the hunt make on average only a small fraction of their incomes from sealing. Media reports and government data indicate sealing revenues contribute only about 5 percent of their incomes, while 95 percent is from other commercial fisheries. In other words, the seal hunt is an economically marginal activity that could be replaced by the federal government with very little effort should it choose to do so."
-Rebecca Aldworth
History of the Hunt
Since the first protest in 1955, those who wished to stop the killing have filmed the horrors, published articles about it, obtained proclamations from the U.S. and foreign governments in opposition to the killing, proposed and facilitated alternative sources of income for seal killers, written countless letters to Canadian officials, and staged demonstrations around the world. The U.S. Congress introduced legislation in 1972 to ban the importation of commodities made from marine mammals, but it wasn't until a worldwide outcry led to European actions in the 1980's- the ban on the importation of baby seal pelts (whitecoats) in 1983, and the threat of a boycott of Canadian fish products in 1987- that the killing declined dramatically. But it never ended. The Canadian government and the sealing industry worked tirelessly to develop new markets to replace those eliminated by these actions; and the government required that seal killers wait until seal pups molted at about 2 weeks of age, when, according to the government, they become adults.
An average of 60,000 seals were killed each year between 1984 and 1994. In 1995, the commercial hunt was resumed when a Newfoundlander named Brian Tobin became the Minister of Fisheries. This was two years after the cod fishery collapsed due to over-fishing. The fishermen blamed the seals for the decline of the cod and demanded a kill. Since 1994, the kill quota has risen each year. Markets were developed in Asia; and seal skins were sold in the seal killing nation, Norway, as well as in Denmark, Poland, Estonia, and Greece. The three year plan ending in 2005 was to kill almost one million seals. When the "struck and lost" seals are included, the total killed exceeds one million, making this the largest marine mammal slaughter in the world. Still the Newfoundlanders are not satisfied and are demanding that even more seals be killed. Some Newfoundland politicians have called for eradication.
Seal pelts are sold in Canada, Europe, Asia, and possibly other parts of the world, but they are not sold in the United States due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Canadian government is currently developing plans to subvert this treasured environmental protection through such measures as appeals to the World Trade Organization and NAFTA boards.
Check out the blog for the Fur Institute of Canada, for a better understanding of how pro- slaughter proponents get false and misleading information into the mainsteam media in support of their cruel fur trades. GO!
Identifying Pro-Slaughter Proponents & Propaganda
Attention Canada! Your Tax Dollars at Work through Government Subsidies!
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and its Special Operating Agency, the Canadian Coast Guard, deliver programs and services that support sustainable use and development of Canada’s waterways and aquatic resources. GO!
"TheAtlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is involved in supporting development at the sector level and has recently provided funding for projects undertaken by the Sealing Industry Development Council (SIDC). Since 1998, ACOA has been involved in four projects, with total contributions of almost $185,000 for public education and public relations campaigns and for the generic promotion of omega-3 and other seal products... and for commercial projects in the seal industry for activities such as processing, product development research and marketing:
$249,000 contribution for product research and development based on producing human and animal protein supplements from seal meat
$144,842 contribution for a research and development project aimed at producing medicinal skin products using seal oil. . "GO!
"Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) has provided financial assistance for seal industry projects under its Coastal Quebec Fund and small business assistance program, IDEA-SME. CED is currently assisting l’Association provinciale du loup-marin."GO!
"Trevor Scott, executive director, International Society for the Protection of Animals... We do not support the killing of any animals, but we do consider the slaughter of the seals in Newfoundland to be humane." GO!
"Opposition to the use of public funds to support sealing was highest in Quebec (72%) and Vancouver (72%), with “strong” opposition to government funding in Vancouver polling at 7 points above the national average." 2009 IFAW
WFL ENDANGERED STREAM LIVE
"Save the Baby Seals"
On Demand Beginning March 1st
“As guardians of nature in the stewardship of our planet, our endowment of intellect and creative talents are gifts to humankind that should be used for the benefit of all living creatures"
-Katia Louise, Exec Dir. Wild for Life Foundation, Inc, Host, WFL Endangered Stream Live
"SEALS OF NAMIBIA"
With Francois Hugo of Seal Alert SA
Listen!
"Seal Warriors"
With Captain Paul Watson, Ian Robichaud, Bridget Curran & Nigel Barker
Photo Credits: Harpseals.org, Nigel Barker, Francois Hugo, Bridget Curran, IFAW. Special thanks to IFAW and HSUS for their research and report contributions.
Additional Thanks to Sea Shepherd, Anti-Sealing Coalition & Seal Alert-SA, Alice Bruckenstein, Lora Lee Ecobelli and Leo Burmester
Canada is the number one supplier of fish and seafood imports to the United States. In 2003, Canada exported 67% of its total fish and seafood exports to this market at a value of $3.3 billion. Canada’s fish and seafood exports to the European Union recorded the highest growth rate among the major markets, increasing by 21% to $446 million in 2003.
captured in a thousand ways and distributed around the world, making them among the most recognizable and well known of species of wild animal on earth. It’s sad and ironic to point out that all this recognition does nothing to help their plight as these seal pups are the victims of a brutal annual massacre in a politically-driven, propaganda-supported slaughter.
Ian Robichaud; lifelong animal lover and activist, founder of the anti-seal hunt focus group Harpseals.org in 2003. I have been to the hunting grounds and experienced the seals 2 times- one in 2003, one week prior to the seal hunt beginning, and the second time in 2005, during the seal hunt, onboard the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat.
Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, is responsible for setting seal quotas and prosecuting violations of the Marine Mammal Regulations.
despite hundreds of violations of seal hunt regulations that were documented by independent observers including those from IFAW and HSUS.
“As guardians of nature in the stewardship of our planet, our endowment of intellect and creative talents are gifts to humankind that should be used for the benefit of all living creatures" 
