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Other seal and sealing-related issues and articlesNote: we reprint articles as they are written, complete with erroneous information. We urge those who care about seals to educate themselves by perusing the various sections of our website and to respond to these articles with letters to the editor and web comments.
Senate to debate bill to end commercial seal huntBy Jordan Press
OTTAWA — A Liberal senator will have his proposal to end the commercial seal hunt debated on the floor of the Senate, but is realistic that it may not go any farther than that. Senator Mac Harb has twice unsuccessfully attempted to have his seal hunt bill debated in the Senate, but without support the debate couldn't happen. On Wednesday, he received the support he needed from a fellow Liberal, Senator Larry Campbell from B.C., to at least hold the debate. The Tories and Liberals support the seal hunt, meaning it is unlikely the proposed legislation would survive a vote. "I'm a realist. I do believe the government and the Senate will not allow me to get it through," Harb said in a telephone interview. "But I want to get the discussion going, whether they like it or not. That's democracy." Harb's bill would, if passed, amend the Fisheries Act to eliminate a commercial seal hunt, but permit First Nations hunters to continue their traditional hunt. It also contains a provision for the federal government to compensate sealers for the loss of the hunt. Harb's argument is that the commercial seal is unsustainable as the market for seal dries up and as the number of seals killed annually stays low due to climate change. A number of trading partners, including the United States and the European Union, have banned the import of seal products. The federal government is fighting the ban at the World Trade Organization and has also signed a trade agreement with China that opens that market to Canadian seal products. Russia along with Belarus and Kazakhstan banned the import of seal products in August. Last year, the federal government permitted hunters to take up to 400,000 harp seals, but only about 38,000 harp seals were caught. This year, hunters are unlikely to reach the 400,000 catch limit set by the federal government, according to pro and anti-sealing groups. Pro-sealing groups said Canadian seal products have been exported to 35 countries and the price for pelts has hit $32 this year from $15 offered three years ago. The seal hunt provides income for about 6,000 sealers in Canada. Even though the Liberals and Conservatives have publicly stated their support for the seal hunt, pro-sealing groups still derided Harb's legislation. "Every time these kinds of statements get made that we shouldn't allow people to hunt seals or profit from it, we feel we have to get our voice out . . . no matter how little legs the legislation has," said Robert Cahill, an executive on the Fur Institute of Canada's sealing committee. Animal rights groups applauded the development, with the Humane Society calling it historic to at least hold the debate. "Debate on this issue has largely been silenced in this country for years," said Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada. jpress@postmedia.com Twitter.com/jordan_press
St. John's fur company to seal deal with N.L.CBC News
The Newfoundland and Labrador government is working with a St. John's fur company to try to improve the market for seal pelts.
Singer Sarah McLachlan protests seal hunt in letter to Prime Minister HarperPublished on April 11, 2012 TORONTO - Singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to stop the commercial seal hunt. The brief letter from the Canadian singer is posted on the website of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). McLachlan writes that "sealers — like tobacco farmers and asbestos miners — need leaders to devise a practical exit strategy for them." She says Canada should not "waste millions more in hopeless World Trade Organization challenges or paying to stockpile pelts when buyers already have seal pelts going back several years." Ottawa has set a harp seal quota of 400,000 this year despite criticism that the allocation is too high because markets have dried up. The federal government has long argued that the hunt is humane, tightly regulated and economically important to coastal communities. Last week, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador said it would provide a loan of up to $3.6 million in a bid to boost this year's commercial harp seal hunt. Provincial Fisheries Minister Darin King said the money will give hundreds of seal hunters an income this year © Canadian Press
Hunters furious over robotic baby sealsBy QMI Agency
MONTREAL — They are white and fluffy, have round, black eyes and long eyelashes, and make adorable squirmy noises when touched. They are two new robotic baby seals that two senior care centres in Montreal bought from Japan for $6,000 each. And they've provoked outrage from seal hunters in Quebec's Magdalen Islands. The province's health minister had to publicly defend the seal hunt on Thursday after he dared to show support for the stuffed animals. Minister Yves Bolduc visited a Montreal senior care centre on Monday and told reporters the robotic seal is no joke. "It's very serious," he said. "These people have trouble with their cognitive abilities and the seal helps them feel very pleasant emotions." The robot vibrates and responds to touch, mimicking the way a dog or cat would respond to petting. It also make cute baby seal noises. However, Quebec seal hunters said they were livid when they found out about the minister's visit. Leonce Arseneau, a member of a seal hunters association in the Magdalen Islands, said he nearly fell out of his chair when he read a QMI Agency article about the minister's visit. He said the government is reinforcing the image of the cute and cuddly seal. That stereotype makes killing adult seals harder because it turns public opinion against hunters, he said. "It's been half a century that we are treated like assassins or barbarians," Arseneau said. "And our minister, he thinks (the robotic seals) are cute." Arseneau said stuffed seals have no place in government care centres. "With all these myths about the hunt that we have to try and dispel, we don't understand why the government didn't choose a baby dog, or a baby cat or a baby rabbit for senior care centres," he said. "We haven't even been able to kill baby seals since 1987." The federal government authorized the slaughter of 400,000 adult seals in 2012. The government says the animals are destroying fish stocks because each seal eats 3 kg of fish a day. There are nine million seals in Canada, making the seal population the largest it's been in 30 years, the federal government says. The Quebec government quickly went into damage-control mode after learning of the hunters' dismay. Bolduc's spokeswoman, Natacha Joncas-Boudreau, said the minister "did not encourage the buying of the seals, he just highlighted a local initiative." She also said the minister recognizes that Quebec's seal hunt is a "sustainable activity that does not involve cruelty." Premier Jean Charest also spoke out against the claim his government showed support for a stuffed animal. "(The health minister) only described what he saw," Charest said.
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 A hunter heads towards a harp seal during the annual East Coast seal hunt in this 2009 file photo. The Newfoundland and Labrador government is providing a $3.6 million loan to aid in the purchase of seal products this year. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press) |
The Newfoundland and Labrador government is providing a $3.6-million loan for the purchase of raw material to boost this year’s seal hunt.
“Through today’s announcement, our government is providing financial support for the seal-processing industry in order to protect the future viability of the province’s seal hunt,” Fisheries Minister Darin King said.
Carino Processing Limited will get the cash.
King says the loan will “ensure adequate raw material is available to Carino to address market demands as they arise, and will ensure hundreds of harvesters secure an income this year.”
The money will allow Carino to purchase seal pelts and blubber or fat.
The government said the company will make a matching contribution for processing and marketing activities.
“Uncertainty around market access and political risk has made it increasingly difficult for companies trading in seal products to secure financing from traditional sources,” said Dion Dakins, chief executive officer of Carino.
“Therefore, the support of the provincial government is essential to secure our future in Newfoundland and Labrador. This industry can continue to make a significant contribution to the economy once the external political issues are resolved over the next year or so. We are confident this will occur.”
In December, King said Ottawa must do more to protect the industry after Russia — a major customer of Canadian seal products — signalled it would impose trade restrictions on those imports.
Canada has filed a challenge with the World Trade Organization over a 2009 ban imposed by the European Union.
Humane Society to N.L. sealers: ‘Let’s talk’
Organization wants to ‘bridge past differences’
Published on April 4, 2012
Ashley Fitzpatrick
thetelegram.com
 Humane Society International (Canada) representatives (from left) Rebecca Aldworth, Rick Wright and Michael Bernard walk along the harbour apron at St. John’s waterfront Tuesday morning between meetings with community groups and provincial representatives. — Photo by Joe Gibbons/The Telegram |
They flew in Monday night and, on Tuesday, three representatives of Humane Society International Canada were meeting with community groups and government representatives in St. John’s, laying out what they see as a reasonable means of ending the commercial seal hunt.
“As an organization, we’re working to try to build ties with sealers and sealing communities and affected communities and Newfoundland rural areas to try to work towards a buyout of the industry that reflects the fact that it is coming to an end, due to climate change and due to international markets closing,” said Nick Wright, who works the society’s anti-sealing campaign. Wright said the organization is looking to “bridge past differences” with sealers, to develop a united voice in promoting a buyout of commercial licences.
“To be clearer, our goal is that Canada will prohibit commercial sealing,” said Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International Canada. However, she said, the organization now sees the potential for its goals to serve the interest of individual fishermen.
She said sealers are facing poor prices, a lack of market for seals and the impacts of climate change on ice conditions, making the hunt harder to conduct and less profitable. The Humane Society believes these conditions will continue.
Aldworth and Wright were in St. John’s with Michael Bernard, a colleague and lobbyist for the Humane Society in Ottawa. While the delegation expressed interest in contacting sealers, Aldworth admitted there was no attempt to arrange a meeting with the Canadian Sealers Association. Association spokesman Frank Pinhorn has previously told The Telegram it continues the fight to have sealing respected as a humane, sustainable industry. The association’s feelings on the future of the hunt remain diametrically opposed to those of organizations like the Humane Society, Pinhorn has said. Pinhorn has accused the association of using the hunt as a fundraising “cash cow,” something Aldworth dismissed, pointing to the organization’s not-for-profit status.
It remains unclear how many sealers will participate in the hunt this year. The season at The Front is scheduled to start April 12 at 6 a.m.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans estimates 7.7 million harp seals to be in the North Atlantic. The total allowable catch for the hunt has been set at 400,000 seals, the same as last year.
Only about 10 per cent of that quota was taken in 2011 and the Canadian Sealers Association has predicted a similar showing this year. There had been no commitment from processors for the purchase of seal as late as March 27 and sealers have been advised to check with their buyers to confirm a market for their catch before going sealing.
The CBC has reported NuTan Furs in Catalina won’t be buying pelts this year. No one from the Nu Tan tannery was available to speak to The Telegram Tuesday. However, Mike Voisey, the owner of Slippers ‘N Things in Happy Valley-Goose Bay (www.slippersnthings.com) — a business specializing in high-quality provincial art and craft products — said the seal skins used in creating the seal fur gloves, hats and slippers sold by his business were typically supplied by NuTan. He said as he understands it, those skins are not going to be available from NuTan this year.
“That puts us in an awkward position,” he said. Slippers ‘N Things takes every effort to sell products made in Newfoundland and Labrador, with materials from this province. “We’re now in the process of trying to find another tannery on the island. Hopefully we’re going to be successful, because we do — sealskin products is one of our specialties and people like it,” Voisey said.
•••
At the Fur Institute of Canada, Rob Cahill acknowledged the year is set to be another tough one for the seal industry. “I understand that there’s been a bit of a re-alignment in the industry in Newfoundland and last week (G.C. Rieber) Carino company out of Trinity Bay announced they will be buying this year. So that’s certainly encouraging and it’s going to help — we understand they have domestic and international markets that are strong enough, certainly, to warrant buying new product. So it’s obviously a good thing,” he said.
He said an anti-hunt lobby was just one factor in bringing the industry to its current state.
“Since 2006, when prices were a record high of $105, there have been a lot of different developments that have impacted price and availability,” he said.
He said prices were inflated in 2006, leading to a natural drop the following year. As time continued on, he said, international market considerations came into play, including an economic crisis in Russia and a “softening” of the Asian economy. “There was certainly a lot more pressure and profile, politically and publicly, around the EU ban of 2009.”
The next hit was environmental factors, he said, including poor ice conditions from 2009-2011.
Since last year’s hunt, trade restrictions on seal products were proposed by the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, closing potential markets for 2012.
With sealers not taking the full quota of seals, Cahill said he has heard suggestions of a cull being a good idea to keep the seal population in check.
“From our perspective, that could lead to more taxpayer costs and potentially less welfare practices used and a wasting of the resource. Those are concerns to us,” he said.
The provincial Department of Fisheries could not comment on the meeting with the Humane Society reps Tuesday, but offered to follow-up with The Telegram in the coming days.
afitzpatrick@thetelegram.com
Anti-seal hunt activists find a strange ally in climate change
Published On Fri Mar 23 2012
thestar.com
Josh Tapper
Staff Reporter
 While activists say the industry is no longer viable, sealers argue seals consume fish that they could catch and sell other months of the year. Paul Darrow, Reuters. |
There was a Nova Scotia spring, not even six years ago, when up to 40 boats, 25-footers and 50-footers and 65-footers, unhooked from the docks near Louisbourg and Sydney and Ingonish, set out to seal.
It was a time, says 60-year-old Robert Courtney, who has hunted seals for four decades, when fishers could pad their piggy banks by peddling a few pelts and sustain a living until the summer fishing season picked up.
But this year, after a warm winter on Cape Breton Island, the sea ice where harp seals perch never materialized. Neither will the hunt.
“I can't see anything going ahead this year,” says Courtney, president of the North of Smokey-Inverness South Fishermen's Association, which represents most Nova Scotia sealers. “There's no ice for the seals to be on.”
For decades, the economic and ethical battleground of Canada's harp seal hunt has failed to yield a victor. On the surface, this year looks to be no different. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans cannot tout an international market boom for seal products, and activists' pleas still fall on deaf ears.
The annual cull is already underway at least around the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Yet the industry is faltering. The 2012 quota is again set at 400,000, the same as last year, when only 38,000 were killed.
Stakeholders once again find themselves caught in a war of attrition. Some predict this year marks a key stage in the precipitous decline in what was once one of Eastern Canada's most lucrative industries, with an export value over $16 million six years ago.
“All the signs point to an industry on the decline, and (it) won't come back,” said Sheryl Fink, seal program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare perhaps the industry's most vociferous opponent.
The harp seal slaughter, it seems, is simply slipping into irrelevance and the numbers augur a grim future.
Four years ago, Canadian seal pelts brought in $6.48 million, according to the DFO. By 2010, with a European Union import ban choking previously popular markets in Germany, Finland and Norway, pelts earned less than $815,000. A 2011 Russian import ban on pelts crippled the Canadian industry, which often used northern European ports as way stations to points east.
Seal oil — found in Omega 3 health products — fared no better, and neither did seal meat. Oil exports shrunk nearly 40 per cent from 2008 to 2010 and the DFO called 2009 seal meat exports “virtually negligible” after Japan, which a year earlier purchased $141,000 of the tender flesh, stopped importing. “We haven't been able to recover from these measures yet,” said Frank Pinhorn, executive director of the Canadian Sealers Association, in St. John's, Nfld.
Pelts go for about $20 on average, according to the DFO, but prices have been reported to be as low as $8. Although the federal government issued about 14,000 commercial sealing licenses last year, fewer than 7,000 were active.
The domestic market for flipper pie, a Newfoundland specialty, seal-based dog food, sausages and clothing, and other haute-cuisine menu items cannot sustain the industry.
“The price for seal products is too low for (fishers) to go out sealing,” Pinhorn says. “Everybody went snowcrabbing last year ... People here who earn a living from the ocean go where the best dollar is.”
Animal rights activists and eco-advocacy groups have found a strange ally in their seal hunt fight — climate change.
Strangely, that global issue — a markedly larger, less controllable force than trade treaties or advocacy campaigns — resonates on both sides of the seal-hunt debate.
The Magdalen Islands cull began Thursday, four days ahead of schedule, after the DFO deemed imminent warm weather might hinder the hunt.
In 2010, the department reported ice cover in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and southeastern Labrador was 80 per cent less than expected and the lowest in more than 40 years. A joint 2012 study by IFAW and Duke University scientists found increased temperatures in North Atlantic waters has contributed to melting sea ice in harp-seal breeding zones by up to 6 per cent per decade.
The resulting logic, according to Liberal Senator and seal hunt critic Mac Harb, goes something like this: Less ice means no breeding grounds, which means fewer seal pups, which means no hunt.
“It's not a way of living when you can only do it two weeks a year,” Harb said of the season which normally lasts from March to late April.
For anti-hunt activists, then, climate change has a benefit.
“I think we can say that climate change is going to kill the hunt this year,” Sheryl Fink of IFAW says. “That's not how we wanted to see this hunt end. My personal feeling is it won't be back.”
While activists say the industry is no longer commercially viable, sealers argue the large seal population consumes fish that they would otherwise catch and sell other months of the year.
The fisheries department, which puts the harp seal population at nearly 8 million, said that while disappearing breeding grounds might become a long-term problem, “there are no imminent sustainability issues.”
“It's a loss of income and loss of product,” Nova Scotia's Courtney says. “We're getting whacked both ways.”
Warm weather expected to hamper Canadian seal hunt and endanger pups
By Stephen Thomson
March 22, 2012
straight.com
Poor sea-ice conditions expected to hamper the commercial seal hunt in part of eastern Canada, but also make it difficult for pups to survive, are a mixed blessing, according to an International Fund for Animal Welfare spokesperson.
Michelle Cliffe and another member of her animal-rights group are in the Atlantic region to keep an eye on any activity taking place as part of the harp-seal hunt that officially opened in the Gulf of St. Lawrence today (March 22).
Cliffe told the Straight by phone that sea-ice conditions were poor in the region in the two previous years and, amid a period of warm weather, the situation is shaping up to be the same in 2012. She said the lack of ice makes it more difficult for hunters to kill seals as the animals are not able to gather in large groups. But it also causes problems for newly born seals.
“Seals are an ice-breeding species so they need stable ice in order to give birth to their pups and in order for their pups to be able to nurse and to be able to get strong enough and old enough so that they can survive on their own,” Cliffe said.
“That’s the reason why we’re very, very concerned about ice. If there’s no ice, the adult seals cannot have their pups.”
Traditionally, a crew with International Fund for Animal Welfare would be on hand to document the hunt, Cliffe said. But with little sealing activity expected, she said the plan is to focus on monitoring how the seals are faring.
“Normally we would be jumping up and down with absolute glee that there are only a few boats hunting seals this year, and we would normally be thrilled to say that there’s no seal hunt in the Gulf, but the sad reality is that the seals are still dying,” she said.
Sealers to activists: Leave us alone
February 28, 2012 - 2:46pm
By MARY ELLEN MacINTYRE
Cape Breton Bureau
 Demonstrators protest Canada's seal hunt during the International Day of Action Against Seal Hunting outside the Halifax Public Gardens in 2009. Anti-sealing groups are keeping an eye on Cape Breton's western coast this week as fishermen prepare to harvest grey seals. (CHRISTIAN LAFORCE / Staff) |
Anti-sealers have pretty well killed the industry so they might as well go back to their homes in Upper Canada, says one sealer from northern Cape Breton.
“They haul out their pictures of pretty little white-coat seals that we haven’t harvested in over 24 years and they call it a slaughter,” said Robert Courtney, president of the North of Smokey-Inverness South Fishermen’s Association.
“And some people in the media call it a slaughter — it’s no more a slaughter than a deer harvest or cows.”
Courtney and a handful of sealers plan to harvest some juvenile grey seals on the west coast of Cape Breton over the next few days, and a group of anti-sealers is lying in wait.
Rebecca Aldworth of Humane Society International/Canada said she and a film crew are ready to capture the harvest on film.
“We’re not going to disclose our location right now because we don’t want any damage to our equipment; it’s happened before,” Aldworth said during a telephone interview Tuesday.
“There are only a few sites where (the sealers) can go and we’re keeping an eye out.”
Aldworth said Margaree Island and Henry Island, just off the coast of Port Hood, could be likely sites for the harvest.
Courtney would only say the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be the logical area.
“This is a good industry being ruined by a bunch of people who don’t know anything about the rural life,” he said during a telephone interview from his home in Dingwall.
“In a slaughterhouse they use a gun on the cows and a knife to cut the heads off chickens and there’s nothing pretty about that, so why come after us?”
The optics of the seal hunt have never played in favour of sealers and they’re very much aware of the bad publicity, which has attracted worldwide attention.
“They’re pretty little animals but they grow into 1,000-pound garbage cans that eat just about anything in the ocean,” Courtney said.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada set an allowable catch of 60,000 grey seals for 2012 in the Atlantic region.
Courtney said he knows only of local buyers interested in the seal meat, flippers and other parts.
“There’s no big buyers right now but we’re ready if we get any big orders.”
Aldworth said when she and her crew visited Hay Island, on Cape Breton’s eastern coast, they spotted an unusual number of dead seals last week.
“About half the seal pups were dead and they appeared to be fat, healthy animals who died for no apparent reason. We’ve been visiting Hay Island every year since 2008 and we’ve never seen that before.”
Aldworth said she reported the finding to scientists at Dalhousie University, fearing the deaths could have been caused by a virus.
Boris Worm, a marine ecologist at Dalhousie, said although it is not his area of specialty, he believes a virus could have caused the deaths and they warrant investigation.
Calls to other experts were not answered Tuesday.
Courtney said he figures he knows what killed the animals.
“It’s those people going on the island and stirring up the herd when they shouldn’t be on the island when they’re nursing. The big animals moving around probably led to the deaths.”
(mmacintyre@herald.ca)
U.S. Humane Society enlists an Iron Chef, iPhone app in boycott of Canadian seafood
Gloria Galloway
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Published Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012 8:00AM EST
The Humane Society of the United States held a glitzy party in San Francisco this week to announce the latest weapon in its war against Canada’s seal hunt – an iPhone app that points users to restaurants and stores that are participating in a boycott of Canadian seafood.
“By putting out this app we are really ramping up our campaign and it’s going to be another way for the fishing industry in Canada to really get a sense of the scale and the scope of the boycott and how it has affected them,” Gabriel Wildgen, a Humane Society spokesman, said Friday.
The group caused barely a ripple on this side of the border when it first launched the boycott seven years ago to put pressure on the federal government. Canadian seafood exports actually went up.
But, since 2005, the Humane Society has increased to more than 5,500 the number of stores and eateries that refuse to sell Canadian seafood and enlisted celebrities like Iron Chef Cat Cora to its cause. The event in California this week began with a photo shoot by Nigel Barker, the star photographer of the television show America’s Next Top Model.
Mr. Wildgen’s group wants the government of Canada to buy out the remaining sealing licences and to put an end to an industry that has been in decline for a number of years as markets have been shut down.
There are no full-time sealers in Canada, Mr. Wildgen said, just fishermen who are making declining amounts of additional income each year by participating in the seal hunt. The Humane Society argues that buying out their licences would give them some seed money to start new sustainable businesses such as seal watching.
But Frank Pinhorn, executive director of the Canadian Sealers Association, says “the sealing industry is not for sale.”
There are nine million harp seals on the East Coast and their numbers will increase by 1.6 million in the next 10 to 15 days when this year’s pups are born, Mr. Pinhorn said. Each seal, he said, consumes 1.4 tonnes of fish a year. “The numbers have to be brought down.”
Meanwhile, Patrick McGuinness, president of the Fisheries Council of Canada, says he doesn’t understand why his industry is being targeted by a boycott aimed at sealers.
And a spokeswoman for federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield said the Humane Society’s actions were nothing more than old tricks by anti-sealing activists. “The U.S. Center for Consumer Freedom questioned the credibility of that campaign,” she said, “contending that 78 per cent of the companies and restaurants on the boycott list it contacted were not actively participating in the boycott and many were unaware they were on the list.”
Mr. Wildgen counters that his group has done its own polling, which indicated that more than 80 per cent of sealers are aware of the boycott and are concerned, and more than 50 per cent have felt the effects of it.
As to the suggestion that seals must be culled to protect the fishing industry, Mr. Wildgen said that is a common misconception.
“There is a lot of good scientific evidence out there that seals are not harmful to cod stocks and fishing stocks,” he said, “and, in fact, by trying to disrupt the very delicate ecosystems of which the seals are a part, it could very well be reducing the amount of cod available to fishermen.”
Marine life
Fish farm operator charged over dozens of seal, sea lion deaths
by Mark Hume
VANCOUVER— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 9:11PM EST
 Sea lions near Sonora Island, B.C., October 12, 2011. John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail |
A West Coast salmon farm has been charged in the drowning deaths of sea lions and seals that became entangled in nets surrounding fish pens.
Grieg Seafood BC Ltd., which operates 21 farms on the British Columbia coast, is charged with violating the Fisheries Act at three different locations.
“The charges appear to refer to the accidental drowning of 52 California sea lions and one harbour seal over a six-month period in early 2010, all of which were immediately reported to the DFO by Grieg Seafood B.C.,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
A court document filed by Gregory Barton Rusel, a fishery officer based in Gold River on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, states the company “did unlawfully destroy marine animals ... by drowning.”
Seven counts deal with the deaths of an unspecified number of sea lions, and two counts are related to the deaths of an unspecified number of seals.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not immediately have a spokesperson available to discuss the case, but an official in the communications branch said it appears to be the first time such charges have been laid in B.C.
Environmentalists welcomed the charges, saying the case highlights the environmental cost of fish farming, but aquaculture industry officials said it sends the wrong message to fish farmers, who are striving to come up with non-harmful ways of keeping sea lions out of their pens.
Stewart Hawthorn, managing director of Grieg Seafood BC Ltd., said he is surprised by the charges, which come two years after several incidents in which a large number of marine mammals drowned in nets surrounding his company’s fish pens.
“There was a change in sea lion behaviour [that year]. They were attacking the nets, and became entangled and drowned,” Mr. Hawthorn said.
“We were very saddened by these accidental drownings,” he said. “[Staff] were very upset ... one of the discussions was should we, as we are allowed to do, get a shooter in to euthanize these animals? There was a very large number of sea lions in the area at the time. And the decision was made, no, that would be the wrong thing to do and we want to find a passive way of protecting the fish that doesn’t harm sea lions.”
He said that later that year, staff worked out a way of using predator nets to keep the sea lions out of the fish pens, and since then Grieg Seafood has not had another marine mammal drowning incident.
“It’s working,” he said of the new predator controls.
“And that’s what’s surprising about these charges. Something that happened two years ago, you kind of think that is in the past, especially with having no repeats. That’s what’s disappointing about it,” Mr. Hawthorn said.
Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, said that, coast-wide, the industry is switching to new predator nets and operators feel they are getting the situation under control.
“Marine mammal interaction can be hard to address and the companies are working hard to do that,” she said. “Companies are moving rapidly to ensure they’ve got the proper nets on those systems.”
However, Catherine Stewart, salmon farming campaign manager for Living Oceans Society, welcomed the charges.
“It’s very good news the government is actually taking this seriously and is starting to crack down on the industry. We hope this is just the start of initiatives to try and contain the marine mammal deaths,” Ms. Stewart said.
Canada and China - Sealing the deal
The Economist
economist.com
Feb 7th 2012, 12:39 by M.D. | OTTAWA
 Whitecoat harp seal pup. Photo by AFP. |
WHEN the Canadian government announced a year ago that China had agreed to open its market to Canadian seal products, participants in the beleaguered industry thought it would be their salvation. The United States had long since banned such imports, the European Union did so in 2010 and there were rumours, since confirmed, that Russia would follow suit. As Denis Longuépée of the Magdalen Islands Sealers’ Association put it at the time: “The population is so high in China that if everybody buys some pelt or product from seal, we won’t have to trade anymore with Europe.”
Yet despite Canada’s fanfare in announcing the agreement, as well as some prodding from the country’s fishing minister during a visit to Beijing in November, the deal has yet to come into effect. It is unclear whether protests by animal rights groups in China, which began as soon as the pact was announced in January 2011, persuaded Chinese authorities to delay implementation, or whether they had other reasons for conducting what has been described as a technical review. Regardless, on February 6th Stephen Harper, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, headed to China, where he will try again to get exports started. “Our government will continue to vigorously defend this humane and highly regulated industry and seek new international markets for Canadian seal products, including China,” he said on the eve of his departure.
The sealing industry, a target of animal-welfare groups for decades, is in decline, with 37,000 harp seals killed last year, down from 67,000 the previous year and almost 75,000 in 2009. (A small number of grey and hooded seals are also killed each year.) Although clubbing the white-coated pups of harp seals has been illegal since 1987, the industry has not been able to counter negative publicity from advocacy groups, or persuade foreign governments that they way adult seals are killed is humane or sustainable. Everyone from Brigitte Bardot (when she was in her prime) to Sir Paul McCartney has had a go at the sealers.
Critics of the industry argue that the taxpayers’ money now used to support the industry would be better-spent buying out the remaining sealers. An estimated 11,000 are registered in Canada, but only a fraction of that number currently participate in the hunt. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one of the business’s more vociferous opponents, says C$7m ($7m) is spent each year to support an industry that earns C$1m in profits. “Why are we wasting scarce resources lobbying foreign markets when the majority of people around the world have sent a clear message that the hunt is an outdated and unviable activity?,” asks Mac Harb, a senator from the opposition Liberal party.
But while the industry may be small, it is important both to the Inuit living in Canada’s north and to sealers living on the east coast. The Inuit eat seal meat and use the pelts for clothing, and some still use seal oil in lamps. All three seal products have been exported in the past, as have seal penises, which are eaten as an aphrodisiac in Asia. The government’s continued support of the seal industry is also in keeping with its policy of promoting Canada’s Arctic. Just before the prime minister left for China, his office distributed a picture of the prime minister accepting a notebook covered with sealskin from the mayor of an Arctic community. It is not known whether he took it with him on the voyage.
Controversy swirls around Seal Day
Published on February 3, 2012
James McLeod
the telegram.com
Opposition objects; one sealer calls it ‘damn stupid’
Topics :
International Fund for Animal Welfare , EU , Mount Pearl , Ottawa , Canada
 Ryan Cleary, MP - File Photo |
Jack Troake, one of the province’s most outspoken sealer, doesn’t think much of Seal Day up on Parliament Hill.
“It’s so damn stupid, it makes no sense. Where were all these people before?”
Troake said after years of attacks from protesters trying to portray the most graphic, horrifying aspects of the seal hunt, an event in Ottawa won’t do much to change the fortunes of hunters.
“I don’t know what they can do now, b’y, because there’s that much damage done that it’s going to take a lot to correct it,” he said. “It don’t mean a thing. This is a 40-year problem, 40 years and then some.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a gaggle of ministers participated in an event before question period in front of the House of Commons.
MPs wore sealskin lapel pins, along with other seal attire in the chamber Thursday.
“Our government is firmly committed to defending the legitimate economic activities of Canadians,” said Harper said in a statement. “Canada’s sealing industry sustains thousands of Northern and East Coast jobs and the traditional way of life of a number of Aboriginal groups in our country.”
Sheryl Fink, director of the seal program for the International Fund for Animal Welfare was dismissive of the Seal Day, saying that they hold similar “photo ops” ever year.
“I guess they couldn’t manage to choke back the seal meat again this year so this year they’re doing lapel pins made out of seal fur,” she said. “Our impression is that this industry is pretty much dead and gone; we’ve got the EU ban on seal products, we’ve got the Russian ban on harp seal fur.”
Fink said the government should be focusing on how to transition seal harvesters out of the industry, given that it’s no longer possible to make a living at it.
Provincial Fisheries Minister Darin King was also at the event. He said that the province’s sealing industry will need federal help to open up foreign markets.
“We really need the federal government with us on the international scene,” he said. “Our government hopefully will try and urge the Russians to reconsider.”
But while it was all smiles and seal fur in Ottawa, opposition politicians were grumbling that the government had turned the whole thing into an unnecessarily partisan event.
NDP MP Ryan Cleary was at home in Mount Pearl Thursday for the opening of the Frosty Festival; he said he’d heard nothing about the Seal Day event until the last minute.
Cleary dismissed the government’s event, saying they really haven’t done anything to prevent foreign countries from closing their doors to seal products.
“It’s obviously a stunt to make it seem like the Conservative government is doing something in regards to the seal industry,” he said. “People want to buy seal products around the world; bottom line is they can’t because governments have introduced bans.”
Liberal MP Gerry Byrne also missed the event, because he didn’t hear about it until the last minute, and had other plans. Byrne said if the government had wanted to send a stronger message about the sealing industry, they should have made an effort to include other parties.
“There’s a lot of people that would like to participate in this, that would like to be part of it, it’s a real opportunity to show a non-partisan caucus on this,” he said. “At this point in time in the industry’s circumstance, you need to be firing on all cylinders.”
One Liberal who was up in Ottawa Thursday was Yvonne Jones.
As an MHA for Labrador, Jones will be participating in the Northern Lights conference which brings together people from across Canada’s north.
At Saturday night’s gala dinner, Jones will be hosting an all-sealskin fashion show.
“The sealing industry has become a major part of that particular show, because the aboriginal cultures of the north are very much dependent on the sealing industry,” she said. “It’s been a traditional way of life for us, and we want to preserve that, but we’d like to do that on a commercial level, ensuring that we have good export markets.”
jmcleod@thetelegram.com
Twitter: TelegramJames
Seal Hunt Canada: Fur Pins, Liberal Senator Mac Harb Says, Won't Revive A Dead Industry
02/1/2012
huffingtonpost.ca
OTTAWA — While MPs prepare to pose Thursday for photographs with seal fur pins on their lapels in support of the sealing industry, one Liberal senator is urging them to take a pass.
“The Conservative government is holding yet another photo op instead of being upfront about the end of the commercial seal hunt,” Senator Mac Harb told colleagues and reporters in a press release Wednesday.
“The government must tell sealers the truth. The market is dead.”
Harb said the federal government is ignoring Canadian opposition to the commercial hunt and turning a deaf ear to the international community’s boycott of seal products. Instead of working towards some sort of compensation scheme for hunters, the Tories are only offering “hollow promises of non-existent seal trade agreements with China, a doomed challenge of the European Union ban at the WTO, and another photo op on Parliament Hill.”
Four Conservative ministers have asked their colleagues to support their northern and coastal communities by wearing a seal fur pin Thursday.
“Sealing is an important economic and cultural driver in Canada’s eastern, arctic and northern communities. It is a long-standing and integral part of Canada’s rural culture and a way of life for thousands of Canadians,” ministers Keith Ashfeild, Leona Aglukkaq, Steven Blaney and Peter Penashue wrote in a joint news release.
Harb scoffs at the idea that the commercial hunt provides an economic boost to the region.
“I don’t know why they are spending all this money making it look like this is a huge industry. What ever happened to high tech? Natural resources? Cars? And oil? This is an industry that is dead. Not dying. Clinically dead.”
When it comes to the seal hunt, Harb is the lone dissenting voice on Parliament Hill. His own party public disagrees with him.
Privately, however, Harb told The Huffington Post, parliamentarians from the NDP, the Conservatives and the Liberals have urged him to continue fighting the seal hunt.
“A lot of my colleagues tell me ‘Good for you,’ ‘Don’t give up,' 'We are getting thousands of emails and letters from constituents and we tell them that Senator Harb is fighting for you,’” Harb said. “I tell them, I also need you to speak out.”
“I have knowledge of people from all the three political parties who are muzzled and they just don’t have the political courage because they feel that the political party will go after them, the whip will go after them. But this is so important, this is our political pride,” Harb said, adding he is completely embarrassed that the seal hunt has stained Canada's reputation internationally.
Every time the hunt begins, Canadian embassies in Berlin, London and Paris get eggs and red paint thrown at them, he noted.
Harb, who describes himself as a non-vegetarian who wears leather, believes the East Coast commercial seal hunt is completely unviable and the federal government needs to engage in an honest conversation with sealers.
But instead, Harb said, the government is engaged in “propaganda,” spending millions fighting the EU’s seal ban at the WTO all for a handful of seats in Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec’s Iles de la Madeleine.
“They need to tell sealers, just like the whale hunt came to an end years ago, this is coming to an end, case close,” Harb said.
In December, the federal government confirmed that the world’s largest buyer of Canadian seal products — the Russian Federation — had banned importing harp seal pelts.
The European Union banned importing seal products in 2010, and the federal government has failed to deliver on a promise to open the Chinese market to Canadian seal meat.
-with files from the Canadian Press
MPs urged to wear pins to support seal industry
The Canadian Press Posted: Feb 2, 2012 11:47 AM NT
 Prime Minister Stephen Harper receives a sealskin gift from Pujjuut Kusugak, the mayor of Rankin Inlet, as Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq looks on during a photo opportunity in his office on Thursday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) |
The federal fisheries minister is encouraging all members of parliament to show their support for Canada's embattled sealing industry by wearing a lapel pin made from seal fur.
Keith Ashfield issued a statement saying the pins would be made available Thursday in the House of Commons.
Ashfield, a New Brunswick MP, says sealing is a way of life for thousands of Canadians on the East Coast and in the Far North.
The minister's appeal comes as the centuries-old commercial sealing industry is on the verge of collapse as international markets dry up.
In December, the federal government confirmed that the world's largest buyer of Canadian seal products -- the Russian Federation -- had banned importing harp seal pelts.
The European Union banned importing seal products in 2010, and the federal government has failed to deliver on a promise to open the Chinese market to Canadian seal meat.
Liberal Senator Mac Harb said the Conservative government should be declaring the industry dead rather than staging a photo op.
 Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield models a sealskin coat at the Northern Lights conference in Ottawa on Thursday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) |
"The Conservative government is ignoring Canadian opposition to the commercial hunt and has turned a deaf ear to the international community and its boycott of commercial seal hunt products," Harb said in a statement released Wednesday.
"Instead of working towards a buyout of sealing licenses, the government is offering sealers only hollow promises of non-existent seal trade agreements with China, a doomed challenge of the European Union ban at the WTO, and another photo op on Parliament Hill."
© The Canadian Press, 2012
Processors may be funded to stockpile seal products
Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries minister says loan guarantees a possibility
CBC News
Posted: Jan 30, 2012 6:12 PM NT
Newfoundland and Labrador may fund processors to stockpile seal products this year.
 This image of a sealer with pelts was taken from some archival CBC videotape. (CBC) |
“The discussion we’ve had with the industry right now is around whether we are able to provide some short-term financial assistance so the hunt can continue and we can stock the products from this year’s hunt in hopes that the market will open up in the long term,” said Fisheries Minister Darin King.
“It’s really the only avenue open to us now at this time.”
CBC Fisheries Broacast Host John Furlong asked:
“Is it possible the province may buy seal pelts and stockpile them until a longer-term solution can be found?”
King didn’t rule that out.
“That’s one possibility. The other possibility is that the government may provide financial assistance or loan guarantees to the operators out there so they can do that themselves,” he said.
Seal cull discussed
King met with the federal minister of fisheries, Keith Ashfield, recently to discuss the seal hunt.
He said Ashfield didn’t commit to any measures to control the growing eastern Canadian seal population – estimated to be more than 9 million animals.
“He indicated that he fully understands the challenge that we face with the number of seals out there and that something is going to have to be done,” he said.
Baby Harp Seals Being Drowned, Crushed Amid Melting Ice
Global warming is melting sea ice the pups need for survival.
Dave Mosher
for National Geographic News
Published January 6, 2012
 A baby harp seal in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Canada (file picture). Photograph by Brian J. Skerry, National Geographic |
Harp seal pups are taking a hit due to global warming, according to the first study of its kind.
Ice-busting storms and warmer waters fueled by rising temperatures are diminishing the ice cover that harp seals need to survive during their first vulnerable weeks of life.
Without thick, solid ice expanses, seal babies drown or are crushed by broken-up chunks of ice.
For the harp seals, "good ice is about 30 to 70 centimeters [12 to 28 inches] thick and covers 60 to 90 percent of the water," said marine biologist Garry Stenson, who works for Canada's Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and helps to monitor and assess harp seal populations.
But ice cover in the sub-Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean has declined about 6 percent per decade since the 1970s. (Read "The Big Thaw" in National Geographic magazine.)
And as climate change continues to degrade the amount of good ice, the average pup survival rate is likely to drop over the years, experts say.
"Some years, when there's poor ice in a given pupping ground, essentially all of the pups don't make it," said study leader David Johnston, a marine biologist at Duke University.
In 2007, for example, more than 75 percent of pups in Canada perished because of poor ice conditions—in 2010, almost none survived, Johnston said.
Harp Seal Biology
Harp seals are by no means endangered, and people hunt the animals to sell their fur, skin, and meat.
(Related: "Controversial Seal Hunt Delayed 2nd Year Due to Ice Breakup.")
Four healthy harp seal populations pepper the northern reaches of Earth: Two in northeastern Canada (together about 8 million strong), one in eastern Greenland (about 650,000) and one in northwestern Russia (about 1.3 million).
Most seals migrate to Arctic waters for the summer, winter, and fall to feed. Around February and March, pregnant females navigate back to one of the sub-Arctic breeding grounds to birth and nurse their pups on the ice.
Pups are weaned in only 10 to 12 days, during which time the pups' masses double. After nursing, the mothers leave their pups and enter the ocean, where males swarm to impregnate them again—but females don't implant their embryos until three months later.
Alone on the ice, the weaned pups convert their mothers' fatty milk into flesh and bone for the next couple of weeks and then begin dipping into the water and learning to eat on their own.
Understanding Harp Seal Decline
To understand how climate variations are affecting sea ice—and how ice loss is affecting harp seal pups—Johnston and his team conducted three major studies, the first in 2005.
(See pictures of how climate change is changing the Arctic.)
The initial two studies examined the effects in Canada of the North Atlantic Oscillation—the difference between subtropical and polar atmospheric pressure, which pushes storms in the Northern Hemisphere to move from west to east.
The oscillation "basically governs the strength and track of storms, and sea ice formation and persistence across the entire North Atlantic," Johnston said. "We needed to understand shorter-term climate variation before looking at the long-term effects." (Take a water-and-climate change quiz.)
The third and most recent paper tied together variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, long-term climate change, sea ice, and seal-pup death rates for the first time.
"It's really difficult to study this. There's a huge void of quantitative information about seal pup mortality," Johnston said. "So, we turned to the stranding record."
For the past few decades, groups of New England volunteers have walked their local beaches and reported dead, stranded seals. This gave Johnston and colleagues a measure of seal-pup deaths to compare with oscillation-affected sea ice.
Their results revealed that seal-pup deaths rose and fell with sea ice loss driven by fluctuations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, which are in turn caused by climate change.
"This is something we knew about awhile ago, but it's complicated," said the Canadian fisheries department's Stenson, who wasn't involved in Johnston's research.
Stenson added that Johnston and colleagues' analysis is "deeper than anyone has done in the past."
"We know that bad ice affects pup mortality, and that sea ice has been declining," Stenson said. "You have to account for that or you can't understand the population dynamics."
(Also see "Longest Polar Bear Swim Recorded-426 Miles Straight.")
Avoiding a Conservation "Train Wreck"
Though harp seals are not rare, Johnston and other researchers are concerned for the animal's future.
The new study adds to evidence that climate change, since the 1970s, has reduced the only birthing grounds that harp seal populations have ever known.
The harp seal's ability to weather long-term climatic changes in unknown, but it's not too late to avoid a "conservation train wreck," Johnston said.
"We should control what we can control. We can't control the reproductive biology of seals, or where and how ice forms in their breeding habitats from year to year," he said.
"What we can control is human behavior."
The harp seal study was published January 4 in the journal PLoS ONE.
Canadian seal cull 'unnecessary due to climate change'
 A pup harp seal off the coast of the Magdalen Islands, Quebec, Canada. Photograph: David Boily/AFP/Getty Images |
Study says rapidly thinning sea ice in north Atlantic has ravaged seal numbers, making annual commercial seal hunt superfluous
Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 5 January 2012 13.07 EST
Canada faced fresh calls to shut down its commercial seal hunt on Thursday, following new evidence that death rates among seal pups had dramatically increased due to thinning winter sea ice.
The study, by scientists from Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, was the first to track declining sea ice cover in all four harp seal breeding grounds in the North Atlantic – with devastating effect.
David Johnston, research scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab, said: "The kind of mortality we're seeing in eastern Canada is dramatic. Entire year classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years. Essentially all of the pups die."
Satellite records of ice conditions since 1979 showed that ice cover had fallen by as much as 6% every decade. The research is published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The loss of sea ice – and its threat to the future of seal populations – has been confirmed by Canadian government scientists, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said.
Up to 80% of the seal pups born in 2011 were thought to have died because of lack of ice, according to the department of fisheries and oceans. The study adds additional weight to the long campaign by animal protection groups against the seal hunt.
IFAW said on Thursday that Canada should work towards ending the commercial seal hunt for good, compensating the hunters and retraining them for other jobs.
"It is time for the Canadian government to face the reality that the commercial sealing is neither viable nor necessary," the organisation said.
Russia recently banned the import of harp seal pelts. The European Union allows only Inuit seal products.
Female harp seals depend on stable winter sea ice as a safe place to give birth and nurse their young, until the pups are grown enough to hunt on their own. The seals typically seek out the thickest, oldest patches of sea ice each February and March.
The seals are able to adapt to short-term changes in ice conditions, Johnston said. But it was unclear the animals would be able to make a long-term move to new breeding grounds with more stable ice, such as those off east Greenland.
Thousands of seals still return each year to their traditional breeding grounds in the Gulf of St Lawrence or off Newfoundland – despite the declining ice.
"There's only so much ice out there, and declines in the quantity and quality of it across the region, coupled with the earlier arrival of spring ice breakup, is literally leaving these populations on thin ice," Johnston said. "It may take years of good ice and steady population gains to make up for the heavy losses sustained during the recent string of bad ice years in eastern Canada."
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