Canada’s seal hunt proceeds, but can decreased demand for pelts work to seals’ advantage?
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It pains us to even mention Canada’s brutal seal slaughter, an annual event that means the untimely deaths of many thousands of harp seals, hooded seals and grey seals.
Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans insists that, despite the gruesome imagery and widespread outrage that surrounds the hunt, it is carried out humanely. Canada’s Marine Mammal Regulations (MMR) stipulate that ‘persons can only dispatch marine mammals in a manner designed to do so quickly. The MMR also stipulates that seals may be killed only by the use of high powered rifles, shotguns firing slugs, clubs, and hakapiks.’
In recent years, the Fisheries and Oceans department says, extra precautions have been taken to ‘establish a clearer determination of death before bleeding and skinning,’ following a review of hunting practices by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Assn.
If phrases like ‘high-powered rifles’ and ‘clearer determination of death before bleeding and skinning’ don’t sound synonymous with ‘humane treatment’ to you, we’d have to agree. And if the argument that the hunt is necessary to protect fish stocks rings hollow, we’d have to agree with that, too.
But recent reports give us a bit of hope that decreased demand for seal pelts may mean that the hunt will draw fewer hunters next year.
Our colleague Kelly Burgess at the Outposts blog reports:
As the seal hunt in Canada moves on to include new groups of sealers from Labrador, North Quebec and Newfoundland, there is news that the pelts may not even have buyers nor command the prices previously paid. A story by CBC News states that some furriers are telling sealers to expect to earn $15 per pelt instead of $30 -- half of what they received last year. Deon Dakins, manager of Nutan Furs, one of they key buyers of seal pelts, said that sealers should make sure they have sales lined up before going out. ‘We’re advising fishermen to make sure that they have a talk with their buyers before they leave to go and make sure they have a commitment for product.’ ‘We’re also very concerned that we could see an oversupply on the shore,’ Dakins added. The market demand may be lower because of the proposed ban by the European Union, leaving a glut of pelts with no buyers.
From the CBC story (linked above) on falling pelt prices:
‘It’s a ridiculous price,’ Jack Troake, a veteran sealer based in Twillingate, told CBC News Friday.
‘I can’t see for the life of me how you could break even, let alone make money, this year. I can’t see how you could do that. It’s almost impossible.’
Springdale fisherman Ray Newman said he cannot imagine how the quota will be met this year.
‘It’s doubtful,’ Newman, who does not yet have a buyer, said Friday. ‘We’ve killed them for less than that over the years, but things weren’t as expensive as [they] are now.’
Newman said many fishermen will have trouble hiring crews to assist with the hunt, particularly when prices are low. He said few people will sign on for a crew knowing there is a small chance of splitting a meagre income.
Rebecca Aldworth of Humane Society International Canada has been on-site to document the seal hunt, and her blog is well worth a read (but we hasten to warn you, it contains much more graphic photography than we’ve used here).
-- Lindsay Barnett