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Harpseals.org is a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Charity Working to End the Slaughter of Harp Seals and Other Seals in Canada and Namibia

Seal pup shot by sealer but not killed. Seal raised his/her hind flippers, strugging in pain, while bleeding from the head. Sealer is seen approaching seal pup to strike him/her with a hakapik. Photo from footage taken by HSUS/HSI 2012.

Update on the 2012 Seal 'Hunt'

Over 68,400 seal pups less than 2 months of age, including over 1,550 seal pups less than 3 weeks of age have been massacred so far in Canada's seal 'hunt'. The sealers are now killing seals each day in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the Front, off Newfoundland and Labrador. The kill quota for 2012: 400,000 seals.

This year, the markets for seal pelts are much smaller thanks to the ban on seal product imports by Russia (see information below). However, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador has decided to prop up the 'industry' by giving the main seal skin processor, Carino (owned by G.C. Reiber, based in Norway) a $3.6 million loan with which to buy seal skins and blubber for a nearly non-existent market. This could spell death for over 100,000 seal pups.

Killed harp seal pup. Photo: HSI 2012

The government claims that this will provide income to hundreds of sealers. Straight payouts to 1,000 sealers would provide $3,600 per sealer, much more than sealers have made from the spring seal killing sprees in recent years.

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has not disclosed terms of the loan nor how Carino would be expected to be able to repay it given the lack of markets for seal products.

On top of this, the province is now giving money to a fur company to promote seal furs in Toronto.

Take action: write to the NL fisheries minister, who is giving out these subsidies, here.

Write to the Canadian senators, who are finally debating a bill to end the seal 'hunt' for good.

Keep up to date on the latest news here. Visit our Help pages to learn how you can stop this massacre.

In 2011, 1,900 grey seals were killed on Hay Island, Nova Scotia. Read more about this 'experimental' slaughter here. This year, fishermen on Nova Scotia said that they have a local market for seal body parts. They killed 8 seals to satisfy this 'market'.

Grey seal mother and pup. Photo by Paul Darrow, Reuters, 2011

Since markets for seal fur have dwindled, the Canadian government is working with the Canadian fishing industry on a campaign scapegoat the grey seals for the failure the North Atlantic cod (whose population was decimated by over-fishing) to recover.

Canada's Senate is considering another seal massacre: grey seals would be slaughtered by the tens of thousands if this proposal is approved.

Once again, the Canadian government is blaming seals for its fishermen's woes. After nearly wiping out the North Atlantic cod by overfishing, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans blamed the harp seals for the decimation of the cod population. After years of unscientific propaganda, they changed their claim to pin the failure of the cod to recover (since the commercial fishing moratorium was introduced over twenty years ago) on the harp seals. Then, they stopped making this unsubstantiated claim and instead called the harp seal slaughter a 'market-based harvest' though many people who heard this propaganda for years in the Maritimes continued to believe it.

Now, the Canadian government is blaming the grey seals for the failure of the cod to recover. Though some of scientists in Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans question the efficacy of a seal cull in restoring the cod population, Canada's government has not often based its decisions on science, let alone ethics. Read more here and here.

Please take action for the grey seals today, by sending the Canadian Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans an email. And remember to Boycott Canadian seafood.

Great news for seals: Russia bans seal product imports

Russia, Canada's largest pelt market, banned seal product imports in August 2011. This fantastic news means that the sealing industry will be even more decimated than it was as a result of the ban on seal product imports by the European Union in 2010.

Read more about the Russian seal import ban here.

We are very grateful to Russia for its compassionate act, yet we still must remain vigilant as Canada and Norway are challenging the bans on seal imports at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The undemocratic WTO, an organization that meets in secret and answers to no one can demand that the EU and Russia reverse their bans or face huge fines.

Thus far, the efforts of Canada to overturn the EU ban have failed. The European General Court threw out a court challenge to the EU seal product import ban by Canada's largest Inuit group in 2011. We hope that the bans will stand, or, if the WTO demands that they be reversed or watered down, we hope that the EU and Russia will stand firm and maintain these bans regardless.

Read more about the Inuit challenge here.

Climate Change an Increasing Threat to Harp Seals

Harp seals also must contend with global climate change, which is causing dramatic reductions in sea ice, on which harp seals rely for pupping.

The animal protection organization IFAW worked with Duke University scientists on a study of the harp seal population and the current and projected future effects of climate change on the species. Read about the Duke/IFAW study here.

MEAT COVE — Poor ice conditions in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence are likely to endanger this year’s harp seal pups. Cape Breton Post, March, 2011

Even the scientists of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) have reported that the population is now in decline. Harpseals.org believes that the future of harp seals is in peril and that it is high time that the government of Canada work to protect seals and ban the killing of seals once and for all.

This year, the ice forecast for the first half of March indicates that there will be large areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that are free of ice. This does not bode well for the seal pups born this spring. As global warming worsens, the (un)natural mortality rate of the harp seals worsens, too. Harp seal mothers need large, sturdy ice floes to give birth to their pups, and pups do not know how to swim for the first few weeks of their lives.

When the ice floes are sparse and the ice is thin, seal pups drown in large numbers. In 2011, the ice floes were in very poor condition. The February 2011 ice cover was the worst in recorded history, but this did not stop the Canadian government (i.e., the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, led by Minister Gail Shea) from setting an astronomical quota on the killing of harp seal pups.

In the end, a fraction of these seals were killed.

Read about the 2011 seal hunt here.

Read the latest news on seals and sealing in Canada here.

The Travesty of Canada's Seal "Management" Program

Mike Hammill, DFO Scientist

It is clear, even from the statements of the DFO's own scientists, that the Canadian government is violating the Precautionary Approach to marine ecosystem management by which they claim to abide. “We can’t really measure the mortality,” said [DFO Biologist Mike] Hammill. “We (won’t) know the true impact until about five years later when these animals will start to have their own young and we will see if there’s a drop in pup production or not.”

Considering the harp seal population guesstimates that the DFO has put out in the past few years, ranging from 5-6 million to 9 million, the incompetence of the DFO is obvious; DFO mismanagement is alive and well.

Since 1996, the numbers of harp seal pups killed have rivaled the level of killing in the 1950's and 1960's. During the years 1952-1970, the average number of harp seals killed was just over 291,000. From 1996 to 2008, the average number of harp seals killed was just over 265,000. The level of killing of the seals during the 1950's and 1960's caused a severe decline in the population, leading conservationists to demand that a quota system be established.

After the DFO was forced to establish this system in 1971, the rate of killing decreased by over 40%. (From 1971 to 1982, the average dropped to just over 165,000.) Then, in 1983, when the European Union banned the imports of whitecoat (less than 2 week old) harp seal pelts (at that time the whitecoats were being targeted by sealers), the market for seal pelts crashed. Sealers thus killed fewer seals. The average number of harp seals killed was about 52,000 from 1983-1995.

Due to the reduction in the killing, the harp seal population grew from less than 2 million to over 5 million, still much lower than the historic population, estimated to be around 20 million, before Europeans came to Newfoundland and began killing seals.

But in 1996, after the Canadian government developed markets for pelts from 3 week old seals, the killing rates escalated. In addition to the increased killing, almost back to pre-1971 levels, the ice floes have become more and more sparse and less and less stable, causing large increases in drowning.

So how could the harp seal population grow from about 5 million to over 9 million in the past few years? Leave it up to the agency that wiped out the North Atlantic cod to come up with numbers like these.

Help the Seals - Boycott Canadian Seafood

How can you help end the slaughter of seal pups in Canada? The best way is to join the boycott of Canadian seafood.

Harpseals.org has been conducting studies to assess the effectiveness of the Canadian seafood boycott campaign. We have found that Americans are very willing to join the boycott. In fact, two months after viewing our edited 30 second TV spot, over 45% of people polled in our nationwide study are willing to participate in the Canadian seafood boycott: over 25% are boycotting Canadian seafood or intend to boycott Canadian seafood; another 21% say that they would join the boycott if they knew how. After they learn about the Candian seal slaughter, what we have found is that they simply need to know how to identify Canadian seafood.

Harpseals.org aims to inform Americans about the seal hunt and provide Americans with the knowledge they need to help end the slaughter - by boycotting Canadian seafood. Please help us as we begin our national advertising campaign for the seals.

In addition to boycotting Canadian seafood, please boycott tourism to Canada, especially to the Maritimes provinces.

Protests and Actions Against the Seal Hunt

Each year, activists put pressure on the sealers and the fishing industry that supports the yearly massacre. Join or organize a protest or other event to spread the word, and help put an end to this atrocity forever.

Send emails and call Canadian politicians - bombard them with calls for an end to the slaughter, once and for all.

A Brief Background on Canada's Seal Hunt

Each year, in the harp seal slaughter, a few thousand Canadian fishermen bludgeon and shoot two-week to two-month-old seals, hook and drag them and skin many of these pups while they are still alive and conscious. They then sell the skins to European and Asian furriers. The bodies of these seals are left to rot.

In this competitive commercial slaughter, each sealer charges across the ice floes in an effort to kill as many seal pups as he can before someone else gets the pups. In 2008, sealers on longliners on the Front (the second phase of the seal hunt, off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador) killed their quota of seals in just two days.

This atmosphere discourages adherence to rules and regulations, such as checking for blinking eyes before skinning the seal pups. Observers of the hunt have documented hundreds of violations of these regulations, but the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), which regulates the seal hunt, has rarely levied any charges against the perpetrators.

Canadian sealer clubbing seals. (c) HSUS / Brian Skerry

In 2008, four sealers were killed and four sealing vessels were destroyed in the treacherous icy waters. The Canadian Coast Guard rescued several sealers (at Canadian taxpayers' expense), but some sealers died in the attempted rescue. Read the news reports about the 2008 slaughter here.

The slaughter of seals in Canada has taken place for hundreds of years. Today, this annual ritual offers so little economic value to the sealers, and even to the sealing boat captains (whose take is usually 50%), that many stayed home in 2008.

To learn more about the history of sealing in Canada and the modern seal hunt, visit our About the Hunt section.

Lone harp seal pup among dozens of harp seal carcasses left behind by sealers. (c) SF Bay / Indymedia

One person who has observed the slaughter of seal pups for many years and who was born and raised in the sealing province of Newfoundland and Labrador is Rebecca Aldworth. In her journal, she described what she saw on the ice floes:

"As we passed one large red vessel, we saw sealers jump off the side onto the ice. They ran towards a single live seal pup, hakapiks in hand.

The pup, sensing danger, tried desperately to crawl towards the edge of the water. But the two men bearing down on her were faster. One sealer struck her on the side, then twice again on the head. He grabbed her hind flippers and pulled her back across the ice, stopping to club her twice more. He grabbed her front flipper and turned her over.

But then the second sealer kicked the wounded pup with his boot. Seeing a reaction, he motioned to the first sealer, who clubbed her four more times on the head.

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."

Snow crabs from Canada are being boycotted.

How Harpseals.org Works for Seals

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.

Explore the site through the links on the left and top of this page.

We also work tirelessly to end the slaughter and provide information and assistance to seal activists all over the world. Our 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.

We invite you to use our website to learn about the seal hunt, and we hope you will join us in working to end it.