From the Rally for the Seals
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C.

My name is Rebecca Aldworth, and I am the seal campaigner for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. IFAW has campaigned to end the commercial seal hunt for more than three decades, and in that time, we have had some tremendous victories. Probably the most important was the 1982 European Union ban of whitecoat and blueback sealskins, which brought about the collapse of the commercial seal hunt for over a decade.

Sadly, in 1996, the Canadian government decided to bring back the largest and most brutal slaughter of marine mammals anywhere in the world. They injected millions of dollars of subsidies into the industry, and today, the kill levels are higher than they were when IFAW was founded in 1969.

The seal hunt issue is obviously my priority today, but it has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I'm originally from Newfoundland, which is where 95% of the seal hunt happens each year. I grew up in a small fishing community, and my family knew sealers. I had even eaten seal meat when I was very young.

But one day, I saw a TV broadcast of footage from the seal hunt. It was the first time I had ever seen a live seal, let alone one being one killed. Back then it was a hunt for whitecoat baby seals, and the images were horrific. It changed me forever.

Of course, the people inside that embassy will try to tell you that the seal hunt is completely different nowadays. They'll say that today, it's a hunt for adults.

Funny, because each and every year, for the past five years, I have watched sealers killing those "adults." Adults who have not yet eaten their first solid food. Adults who are desperate to escape from the hunters, but have to stop at the water's edge because they haven't yet learned how to swim.

Make no mistake, this is still very much a hunt for baby seals. Ninety-seven percent of the seals that were killed last year were under just three months of age, and the majority of them were under a month of age. It is legal to kill a seal pup in Canada as soon as it has shed its first white hair—at about 12 days of age. So the PR people from the Canadian government can dress it up any way they like. But it's the same hunt it's always been.

The people inside that embassy will also try to tell you that this hunt is humane. Interesting how some people define "humane." I went to a sealing conference last November in Newfoundland. The room was full of sealers and people from the Canadian government, and many of them weren't exactly thrilled to see me. Especially when I stood up in that room, as they talked about how humane this hunt is. And I read them testimony from sealers, taken by enforcement officers. Testimony about a time in 1998 when sealing boats went into a whelping patch. About how the sealers from those boats killed pregnant mothers that were about to give birth. And how those sealers ripped the living fetuses out of the dead bodies of the mother seals, and threw them into the ocean. And stood by and watched as the pups struggled to climb up onto the ice.

What they tried to say then, and what they will try to say now, is that there is always a bad element in any industry—the 2% who will break the law.

Well, after 5 years of bearing witness to this brutal hunt, I can tell you that it must be a pretty active 2%. Because they're everywhere. In every direction I look, in every direction we film. Every single year I see them stabbing sharpened boat hooks through conscious animals and dragging them across the ice. I see them shooting seals and leaving them to writhe around in agony until they get around to finishing them off. And I see them skinning seals alive.

There's some footage playing here today. I was part of the three-person crew that filmed it this March.

The ice was very thick this year, and as we flew across it, we saw 15 sealing boats formed in a large circle about one mile apart from each other. We landed in the middle and set off on foot. The sealers were on snowmobiles, so it was hard to keep up with them. But we ran as fast as we could, and we did catch up. Because of new regulations, we were able to get closer to the sealers than ever before. We were just 15 meters away, and we filmed everything.

The sealers were running across the ice, clubbing each baby seal once on the head—not to kill it, just to immobilize it. Then they would go back and club a seal once or twice on the head. They would begin to cut the animal open, and it would begin to struggle. The sealer would club it again, and start cutting again. Again the seal would start to struggle. It was horrific.

The Marine Mammal Regulations state that sealers must perform a simple test called a "blink reflex" to see if the seal is still alive before they skin it. All it involves is touching the seal's eyeball. If the seal blinks, it is still alive. Not much work to ensure you don't skin an animal alive. But I have yet to see a sealer perform it.

What you are seeing here on television today is just a few minutes of the film we took. But it went on for days.

It is horrible to see the aftermath of this slaughter. There is blood everywhere. Every few feet as you walk across the ice, you pass by large pools of blood and carcasses lined up in open graves. Their eyes stare up at you.

It's a dirty little secret the Canadian government doesn't want you to know. The sealers don't take the carcasses, because the meat is practically worthless. So they leave them to rot on the ice, or dump them in the ocean. Hundreds of thousands of them. Rotting because all the sealers want is the skins.

Many of you are probably wondering how Canadians can support this kind of cruelty and waste. Certainly, the people inside that embassy will try to tell you that they represent Canadians on this issue.

Well they don't. Because the solid majority of Canadians are opposed to this slaughter, and 85% believe that seals under a year of age should be protected from any hunting at all. Canadians have held rallies, have called their members of Parliament, have signed petitions, have sent letters. But our government refuses to listen.

It's ironic…many of the people inside that embassy are likely opposed to this slaughter, too. But they have to defend it because they are there to represent the Canadian government. And the Canadian government needs this slaughter.

They need it to cover up for their mismanagement of the commercial fisheries off our East Coast. They need people to believe that seals are eating all the fish—because if they don't, someone might start to ask how the Canadian government continues to allow so many ocean species to be fished to the brink of extinction. And they need it to make it look like they are creating jobs to replace those that were lost when they mismanaged the cod fishery into collapse.

But does the sealing industry really help Newfoundland? The people inside that embassy will tell you that 12,000 sealers and their families depend on this hunt. Of course, what they won't say is that if all 12,000 sealers participated in last year's hunt, they each would have made a little over $100 after their costs.

The truth is that there aren't 12,000 sealers—just 12,000 licenses that are issued each year. Because the licenses only cost $5, and fishermen must renew them every year or risk losing them. So even if they are not planning to go out sealing, they will pay the $5 to keep the license so they have the option of going the next year.

The Newfoundland government itself only estimates there are 4,000 sealers. And if all of those sealers took part in the hunt this year, they would have made a little over $1,000 after their costs. Hardly a primary source of income.

Over the past five years, the landed value of the seal hunt has accounted for only 2% of the landed value of Newfoundland's fishery—the tourism industry in that province alone is worth 50 times that much! And what the people inside that embassy won't tell you is that Newfoundland's fishery is wealthier today than it has ever been—even before the cod fishery closure.

I think what frustrates me more than anything is what the Canadian government is telling Newfoundlanders when they sink money into the seal hunt instead of education or real growth industries. What it says is that what we are really good at is slaughter. That a lifetime of killing baby seals is what we should look forward to. Now, of course, no one in that embassy would choose such a living for themselves. But for us rural folk, well, we should be grateful.

Well, I'm here today to say no. No to this brutal, outdated slaughter. No to misinformation from the Canadian government. No to my tax dollars paying for something the majority of my country is dead set against. And no to my elected officials putting in overtime to act as spokespeople for this horrible industry.

We are on the eve of a federal election in Canada, and we will soon have a new prime minister. I want that person to hear our message loud and clear today. I want our new prime minister to know that he or she must act immediately, for the sake of Canada's international reputation, to end this slaughter.

Thank you.