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Visit the Canadian Sealers Association's website here and learn how this consumer driven industry is properly managed.
The government's Fisheries and Oceans Canada website also has pages devoted to seals and the annual cull, as well as other reports. Go here for the Understanding Seals and Sealing In Canada web page.
Sometime I lie awake at night and wonder "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a little voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." ~ Charles M. Schulz
From reading their website, it looks like an unusually well managed and sustainable fishery. Only 10,000 hooded seals taken a year out of population of half a million. That's roughly 2%. From the harp seals, annual take looks like something around 7%, or roughly 330,000 critters.
I took particular note of this quote:
A recent report published by the Canadian Veterinary Journal concluded 98% of harp seals are killed in what veterinarians describe as an acceptably humane manner.
That's pretty good too, certainly much better than dolphin and porpoise fisheries. So long as the purported Canadian enforcement works as advertised, from a ecological standpoint this is good stuff. Of course very few people actually think it's great to kill seals from an emotional standpoint, but this is the ecosystems and preservation forum, alas.
There's always the caveat that the link I'm getting all this info from just so happens to be run by the professional sealers. So all of this could just be wishful thinking on their part. If anyone finds a government or NGO link on this industry it would be good to compare notes.
Also the statement that "seal pups" are being slaughtered is completely false. As quoted from the Canada Dept. of F & O:
"The seals hunted today must be independent, self-reliant animals. Although gruesome images of nursing seal pup hunting continue to be circulated around the world, in fact, the commercial hunt of nursing seal pups is banned in Canada."
Might be worth pointing out that they're an introduced species on the island that they're going to be culled on, previous sterilisation and relocation attempts have met with little success, and that a population explosion means that they are now starving and destroying the ecosystem there at the same time.
Are there any seal clubbing trips offered? Can you whallop one on scuba, or is it forbidden? Hey... wanna hear a joke? A baby seal walks into a club....
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Originally Posted by torbaydiver
