March 21, 2006

By Rebecca Aldworth

CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND—For the second day in a row, the ProtectSeals team flew by helicopter over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, searching for the harp seal nursery. We had hoped to film the peaceful and pristine ice floes before human greed turns the Gulf into a bloody wasteland. As always happens when we visit the seal nursery, I felt a sense of devastation as I reflected that, in a few days, the commercial seal hunt in Canada will begin.

We flew over ice that should have been very familiar. Two weeks ago, I spent an amazing day in the same area with Heather and Paul McCartney, introducing them to one of nature’s greatest wonders, a spectacular glistening landscape filled with newly born pups nursing or sleeping on the ice, fearless in their innocence.

But today, the ice was not familiar at all: Where just two weeks before we had seen solid, giant pans large enough for several helicopters to land, we now looked down on open water broken up by tiny sections of crushed ice barely large enough to hold a seal.

We pushed on, convinced that, at any minute, we would come upon those expected vast ice pans covered with tens of thousands of seal pups. But after a full day of searching, we found none.

The HSUS

Large ice pans and seals were both few and far between.

It was shocking to witness firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change. Record high temperatures and the resulting lack of ice cover off Canada's East Coast will have devastated all ice-dependent wildlife this year, including the harp seals. A chill gripped me as I realized that the lack of ice may have already killed the number of seals the Canadian government is allowing to be slaughtered in the Gulf under the current seal quota—long before the seal hunters have even left their ports.

Harp seals need the ice to give birth on, and they need the ice to remain solid during the crucial weeks it takes for the pups to develop enough to swim independently. For months, scientists have been predicting that the unusually low ice cover this year would lead to a very high incident of natural mortality in harp seals. And from what we saw today, it seems those predictions have come true. We spotted a few mother seals, but they were alone, their pups conspicuously absent. It is clear that many pups have likely already drowned.

Yet despite the grim evidence, the annual hunt, unbelievably, is set to begin in a couple of days. The pups who managed to survive the ice loss will be clubbed or shot to death for their fur. And if there are not enough baby seals still alive for hunters to kill in the Gulf, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans will simply allot a higher quota to the hunters who will in a few weeks be shooting seals in the waters northeast of Newfoundland. This year, the seals are twice devastated—once by the ravages of climate change and then again by human hunters.

As our helicopters headed back to Prince Edward Island, the fate of these seals and the irresponsibility of the Canadian government hit home. We passed over a harbor where many commercial sealing vessels were already moored, geared, and ready to seek and kill the few seal pups left in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. According to the Canadian government, about 40 sealing vessels will go out to hunt seals this year—the surviving baby seals simply don’t stand a chance.

Yesterday the head of one of the sealers' associations remarked smugly to Canadian media that the bad ice conditions will make it difficult for our helicopters to land and for the ProtectSeals team (and journalists) to document the commercial seal hunt. He is right in one way: This will be a challenging hunt for us to film. But we are absolutely dedicated to ensuring that when this hunt happens, we are there to bear witness.

And we need your help to do it. Every day that these seals are killed, we will be here. We will post our photographs, footage, and reports directly from Prince Edward Island. And that is where you come in: Please be a part of our expedition. We need you to log on to www.protectseals.org—tell your friends, your family, and your coworkers what is happening here in Canada. With your help, we are working to ensure this is the last slaughter any of us will ever have to see.

Rebecca Aldworth is Director of Canadian Wildlife Issues for The HSUS.