Canada defiant over annual seal pup cull

[go west young man]

Source: Telegraph UK

This year, the Canadian government has attempted to foil protests by the cull's most active opponent. It has warned the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society that one of its vessels, the Farley Mowat, would be in contravention of international maritime laws if it tried to stop the hunt.



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/26/easeal126.xml

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As a former Canadian resident I would love to see this bloodbath go away. Obviously the Canadian government is getting desperate as they are now threatening Sea Shepherd.

[lligrd]

1. I Bet Cheney Would Love To Participate In The Hunt Of Baby

seals. One can only hope he is allowed to and takes a friend along (preferably *) with him.

[lligrd]

2. I Mean What Kind Of People Would Ever Agree To Club Babies

of a species that can't even fight back except those mentioned above?

[Thothmes]

5. Maybe these are people trying to make a living in an area

without a lot of Industry and a slowly dying fishing industry.

[Barrett808]

27. I'd say "*rapidly* dying fishing industry" -- due entirely to human overexploitation

...and now, climate change.

[saigon68]

9. Maybe they go fishing too

[and-justice-for-all]

3. This always makes me ill...deplorable babaric act. nt

[EvilAL]

4. I'm Canadian

I hunt and fish, my house is made of wood and I cut trees to heat it.
I don't agree with the way they kill the seals either, but I also don't agree with activists breaking laws and doing whatever the hell they want.

[go west young man]

8. Breaking laws?

The Canadian government is making up new laws at it goes along. They will actually arrest people who take pictures of the seal hunt now. They are threatening Sea Shepherd with laws that apply to commercial vessels even though Sea Shepherd is not a commercial vessel and is registered as a yacht. Canada's government like the Japanese in regards to whaling continues to move the goal posts to suit their commercial interests. Personally I'm not buying it.

[MaryCeleste]

10. Actually its passing new laws

SCCS may get their flagship impounded this time. Also be interesting to see how much longer they keep their Dutch registry

[navarth]

11. Fuck that

They should do whatever they can to stop this abominable cruelty. This sounds like a rationale for continuing to pollute because cleaning the environment costs too much. I'm only part Canadian (my Grandmother) and I think these people are assholes.

But who are the BIGGEST assholes? Maybe the people who buy the coats made from these poor innocents.

Either way, this is a MONSTROUS act. Fuck everybody who's involved with such an abomination, just like the assholes who lie us into phony wars.

[Freddie Stubbs]

13. Perhaps they would be more successful if they focused their energies on

elected a Canadian government which will ban this.

[Number9Dream]

6. Canadian govt subsidizes seal slaughter

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/04/11/HuntingSeals/

[Omaha Steve]

7. I was going to post this until I saw it was done already

Thank you. K&R! When will humans learn about bad karma as a result of their actions?

[pbca]

12. This is silly

I'd be glad if it were done more humanely but reality needs to sink in at some point

1) The seals are not an endangered species: On the contrary there is an overpopulation that is already threatening North Atlantic Fish stocks
2) Most of the 'cull' is done by natives who use every part of the seal - it is not just a hunt for fur. It's a tradition and a way of life that goes back to a time long before there were any European settlements in North America.

There is no political party in Canada (and it's a very left leaning country) seriously calling for an end to the cull.

This is feel good 'save the cute animals' politics that is both uninformed and ingorant of both environmentalism and reality.

[navarth]

14. silly my ass

It ISN'T done humanely. Sink THAT into your reality.

[pbca]

15. Talk to the Natives

They've been doing it for thousands of years, but I'm sure you can change their mind - I know I'm impressed by your superior rhetorical skills.

[navarth]

16. Rhetorical skills are irrelevant in this case

An abomination is an abomination. Something needs to be done to stop all animal cruelty. Try to help instead of labeling people who care as 'silly'. Is that good rhetorical skill? Not important. I don't need to insult you. I want the abomination to stop.

[pbca]

21. If it stopped

alot of people would go hungry. This is a huge part of the diet for Northern aboriginals, their land (much of which is covered in permafrost) doesn't allow for much crop cultivation.

I used the term silly because the argument to that point showed a complete ignorance of the issue, who does it and why.

[navarth]

24. sure, I understand all that

and hopefully you understand my side.

there have to be creative ways to find alternate livings for those folks. I sympathize with them of course, but nobody in this wonderful world is immune to having to change their act. that's cruel too, I know.

I don't have the answers. Yet. But we need them, and finding them begins with people pointing the finger and saying 'we need to change this'. I know that's a bit lame, but it's a start.

Bottom line (for me): this is ugly, cruel and abominable. We should be able to do better.

[Number9Dream]

26. Statements not backed with fact

Overfishing the problem, not seals.
"When fish eat fish, or when seals eat fish, the nutrients remain in the ocean. They are recycled. When humans remove fish from the ocean, the nutrients are removed. Fisheries scientists generally ignore this fact. Seals and fish clearly coexisted for millennia. Embarrassed fisheries officers have simply used seals as a scapegoat for poor management."
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/04/11/HuntingSeals/

If pelts weren't the main reason for the slaughter, why are hakapiks used? The carcasses are frequently left on the ice. Here’s what one such international team of five independent veterinarians found:
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.
http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/general/default.aspx?oid=82078

[flvegan]

17. If they discontinued overfishing the area, they wouldn't need to wipe out competition.

Earning a living while raping the world is evil no matter how it's done.

I wish SSCS well and a safe trip. It's already been shown that a good number of these sealers are violent humans that will attack other people unprovoked.

[pbca]

18. They have discontinued it now

The number of fishing boats has been slashed dramatically - and those that are left must adhere to a strict quota. It's devestated the Maritime economy, just ask the people who live there.

[Barrett808]

19. Strip-mining the oceans of biomass and blaming marine mammals when the fisheries collapse

Surely enough reason for a "cull".

[tuvor]

20. Not that I don't agree, but how come I never see anti-veal posts on DU?

[LostinVA]

22. You've apparently just missed them

[pbca]

23. I do find it somewhat ironic that

while children are being blown up in Iraq (and elsewhere) and human children are dying of hunger and easily preventable diseases throughout the world that so many people have time to worry about baby seals. I suppose the baby seal pictures are cuter than the starving child posters?

[Barrett808]

25. I'd explain this by observing that starvation and war are diffuse and overwhelming issues...

...while clubbing baby seals is just...clubbing baby seals. A much more narrowly scoped and tractable problem.

[pbca]

31. I suppose but...

When you consider that it is primarily practiced by natives who have been doing it for thousands of years, that Seal is a major part of their diet, that they actually revere the seals and waste none of it - fur, meat, fat, bone etc., is all used - and that they live in a rocky and mostly frozen land that doesn't yeild many crops - the situation becomes much more cloudy (especially since the seals are actually overpopulated, the drop in the polar bear population has caused an upswing that threatens fish stocks).

The seal people, most of whom live in large cities in warm climates, dramatically oversimplify the issue.

[navarth]

28. It's not ironic if you think about it

Every day on tv people see starving kids, people being blown up, tortured by Jack Bauer. They're immunized. They don't see innocent baby seals being brutally clubbed to death. All of it is evil. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have time to worry about baby seals.

And frankly I'm always a bit dismayed by the formula that says human life is so much more valuable than other life. That strikes me as human arrogance and ignorance. I'm not implying that you're doing it, but your post certainly brought it to mind.

[pbca]

32. But the people doing the clubbing

don't see it as evil, they see it as necessary to their own survival and way of life.

It is also worth noting that war essentially doesn't exist amoung northern aboriginals, it never has, and (at least until white people came along and gave them Satellite TV) things like spousal abuse, child abuse, even murder were basically non-existent amoung them. They are not a naturally blood thirsty people.

[navarth]

35. sure.

that's all true, but I was referring to your feelings of irony regarding people in this culture, not the native culture. Right? I'm sure that those people have their own way of looking at it.

For that matter, we can say that none of us are naturally bloodthirsty. I could make an argument that the bloodthirstiness is an abomination caused by (name any) factors that twist an innocent people into...whatever name you'd want to give them.

Those people, along with everybody else, need to be raised up to a higher level of perception that would reduce all of this ugliness...hopefull remove it forever. Killing to live is as old as the hills. But hopefully we're evolving.

[pbca]

38. Maybe

but it's a different situation for them - Unless global warming makes alot more of their land suitable for farming: they have no suitable alternatives. A good deal of it is rock covered by several feet of ice.

There are other issues as well. In a recent experiment in western Canada diabetic aboriginals were put on a strict diet that included primarily meat, non-root vegetables, nuts and berries. In most cases they lost tremendous amounts of wait and their diabetes actually went away. It would appear that amoung northern aboriginals that meat has been a central feature in their diet for so long that their bodies react negatively to a diet that features less meat and more grains.

For them it will take physical evolution (not just mental) and it will take climate change to allow them to support a more agricultural lifestlyle.

[navarth]

40. I'm all for that

let's help them along. From some of the other posts I've read on this thread, it appears that some of them have lost all semblance of humaneness. It's one thing to kill something to live. It's another thing to skin that animal while it's still alive. That's crossing an even worse line than killing. Evolution ain't pretty, but it's necessary. Stop the abomination, in whatever form it appears. Find a way. Hopefully not climate change.

[LostinVA]

33. I can focus on more than one issue -- human rights AND animal rights are important to me

[LanternWaste]

42. There's no finite amount of emotion.

Many people have the capacity to feel sadness and outrage in more than one specific direction. Feeling anger or outrage at one activity is not predicated by a like amount of anger or outrage at another outrage being reduced. There's no finite amount of emotion.

[LeftyMom]

36. I know there have been a few discussions of that issue.

Usually focused either on confinement or on the relationship between veal and the dairy industry. Oh, and there was a rather acrimonious discussion about the Dali Lama's eating habits last year, which involved veal.

[Barrett808]

29. After last year's disastrous failure of the nursery due to disappearing pack ice...

I won't be surprised if we see a similar failure this year.

Meltdown
Sunday April 1,2007
By Stuart Winter

BABY seals are dying in their thousands as global warming turns the ice fields where they are born into a watery wasteland.

Thousands of baby seal are perishing as high temperatures break the ice into millions of tiny pieces, hurling the youngsters into the treacherous seas.

Unlike the parent animals with their coats of thick, insulating blubber, the cubs cannot swim and have no way of staving off the bone-chilling cold of the late winter seas.

Once they slip into sea they quickly succumb to the cold and exhaustion.

But even if they are lucky - like the pitiful animal in our picture - and manage to scamble back on to the ice with their tiny flippers, an even more chilling fate awaits - a hunter’s club.

...

Researchers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare are reporting that the ice fields where hundreds of thousands of harp seals gather each spring are all but empty.

“The conditions this year are disastrous. I’ve surveyed this region for six years and I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW.

“There is wide open water and almost no seals. I only saw a handful of adult harp seals and even fewer pups, where normally we should be seeing thousands and thousands of seals.”

“It would be reckless for the Canadian government to allow the hunt to proceed this year, given the high pup mortality that has apparently occurred.

“We may not be able to save these seals from the effects of global warming, but the Canadian government can save the survivors from being hunted. I can only hope that they will do the right thing and cancel the hunt.”

(more)

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/3293

[hyphenate]

30. I've been fortunate enough to hear both sides

of the story, as my uncle and aunt live in Newfoundland, and that's where my dad and his side of the family was from. It's not as simple as the residents going out to club baby seals to death. It's because they are overcrowded and they are culling the herd. I'm sure there are other ways to control the seal population, but this is the method they have used for a very long time.

In addition, it does hurt the fishermen, because the seals are eating all the fish in the area, making it doubly difficult to fish.

Now, having said that, I absolutely hate the slaughter. My uncle and I did have several arguments about it over time. At the end, I just decided not to listen to anything on the subject, because both sides have their points, and it no longer, for me, is a black and white issue.

I really do appreciate the work the Sea Shepherd group is doing, and I am happy to see that the whaling industry especially, has been hurt by the group. Although I am sure there are two sides to that story as well!

That's the trouble--everyone has their own version of the story, and until we can mediate a compromise of some sort and hear all the aspects of an event, we are actually running on empty. Is it justice to hear only one side in the struggle, and condemn the other party without knowing what they have to say about it?

Let's face it--there are times when shades of gray permeate a topic when both side have been allowed to talk, but there are still times when, knowing both sides, the issue becomes even more pronounced in the solution. Take the poaching of tigers in the world--we know that their number is dwindling daily, and we know that the poachers get paid by some countries for the tiger "parts" which are used in Chinese medicines. But the obvious question is, how are they going to prepare when there are no longer tigers out there? Killing all the tigers now is self-defeating in the end, and it is high time these people who buy poached tigers for their "medicinal" uses find something else to use and leave the few tigers in existence alone.

There are some awful attitudes in the world toward animals, though, and no nation is without blame. While there are more than one viewpoint in historic struggles like the seal hunt, there are definitely other times when it's very, very clear that one party is horrifyingly wrong and shows a sick attitude. We've seen them--the Michael Vicks of the world, canned hunts, the cosmetic industry's experiments on animals, the shooting of greyhounds, the kidnapping of small dogs and cats to train the dogs of drug manufacturers to be mean and nasty, cat killers like Frist.... It's this behavior toward animals that must be stopped and eradicated, and this is where we need to show activism.

In a recent book I read, I realized the seal hunt has gone on for many, many years, and will likely do so for a lot longer. But we are finally getting somewhere with other issues, and I think we need to maintain measures which will finally end for all some of the more gruesome aspects of animal abuse on planet earth. Once we can tie up all the loose ends in areas where we have a chance, we might find we can sit down at a table with groups engaging in such traditional culling as the seals, and the hunting of the Minke whales.

Trust me....I know how difficult it is to see the seal pups being killed. I've know for 32 years now, after seeing the deed carried on in a film in 1976. It sickened me and made me madder than all hell. But now, 32 years later, I have talked with relatives who live closer to the situation and while I do not condone it, I know why they do it.

In 1989, my mom and I went to a Christmas reunion of the her family, and my uncle explained their reasoning behind the seal cull. But at the same time, he said he could no longer hunt--he has come upon a deer and was going to shoot it, but he said when he looked into her eyes, he couldn't do it.

He made a choice--he understood something, perhaps the fact that the deer was alive and helpless--I don't know for sure, and perhaps he didn't know either. But something touched him about her, and he stopped.

It's when people finally see a glimmer of what many of us have already experienced, that they come full circle. These are the kinds of incidents where the changes for a better humanity come into play, and we need to be ready to encourage that change completely. Just as we, as a species, have hunted, poached, killed and even tortured animals for centuries, it will likely take some time to see animals in a better light, and to stop all the horrible things which are being done to them by humans. We've actually come quite a way already, considering how things were at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. But those who have spent large parts of their lives in that struggle have gained some victories, and they must not forget that. Many look to the still mountainous hill before them and think about all the things which will continue without abatement, instead of being comforted by all the past accomplishments. I'd rather look with some hope, instead, to the future, knowing that we've already come a longer way than we believe we have.

[Number9Dream]

34. A thougthful post, but you might want to read this...

regarding seal "overpopulation", and seals "eating all the fish".

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/04/11/HuntingSeals/

snip> "When fish eat fish, or when seals eat fish, the nutrients remain in the ocean. They are recycled. When humans remove fish from the ocean, the nutrients are removed. Fisheries scientists generally ignore this fact. Seals and fish clearly coexisted for millennia. Embarrassed fisheries officers have simply used seals as a scapegoat for poor management."

Man upsets the balance of nature, not seals.

[pbca]

37. But the seal hunt has been part

of the natural cycle in that area for at least 10-15 thousand years - Inuit - Seal and Fish all seemed to be doing fine until fisheries became commercial and not just sustenance.

[Number9Dream]

41. That's exactly the point of the article

Prior to poor fishing management and clubbing for pelts, there was a natural balance.

snip> "If the landsmen and indigenous hunters retained their right to hunt ADULT seals, this would have almost no appreciable impact on the seal populations. Few, if any, of the protesters have spoken out against a local, indigenous, shore-based seal hunt. The Canadian government, however, uses cultural issues to attract political support and mislead the international community."

[slackmaster]

39. To repeat the exact same comment I make every year when Canada does that

O Canada.

:argh:

[DBoon]

43. Be grateful the Canadians only slaughter seals

and not Iraqi humans