GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, April 1, 2005—Today we begin by witnessing a slaughter and end at the center of a battle of rights: The sealers' rights, as defined by the Canadian government, to kill baby seals—and our rights to come to the ice floes and peacefully witness and document the slaughter. It is clear the sealers, the fishing industry, and the Canadian government believe these ice floes to be the property of the sealing industry.
This ocean, which belongs to all Canadians, has been commandeered for slaughter.
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The HSUS Seal Watch team is awake at 5 am. The weather forecast is clear, and our pilots give us the go-ahead to fly to the seal hunt. We are anxious to get out to the ice. Two days of the hunt have passed, and because of the weather we have not been able to witness it.
We know this will be a challenging day for filming. The crew of the Farley Mowat—Sea Shepherd's vessel—were attacked yesterday by club-wielding sealers. The bad weather has been frustrating for the sealers, and some of their boats are getting damaged. They are far more likely to be violent with us today.
Our helicopters leave as soon as we arrive at the hangar. Our first stop will be the Farley Mowat, which is now located at the edge of the seal hunt. We are planning to pick up Sea Shepherd's footage of yesterday's attack because the members of Sea Shepherd are worried it will be confiscated if the Coast Guard boards the boat. We fly in and land. One of our team runs over to the boat and grabs a bag of video tapes. We will turn the footage over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and media at Sea Shepherd's request.
We leave for the hunt area and are surprised to see only 25 sealing boats operating there. It is likely that many others have already filled up with seal skins and have left for home. We are determined to get as much footage as we can today.
We fly over an area where hundreds of carcasses have been left to rot on the ice. We land next to them. This is always one of the most disturbing parts of the trip: looking at the remains of this slaughter, left on the ice in open graves. By the end of this hunt, the ice will be covered with carcasses. The tiny, skinless seal bodies stare up at us, their eyes still intact.
I find myself noticing tiny details. Their teeth, so small and still developing, now set in a death grimace. The flippers, which so resemble human hands, cut off of the bodies and left at the sides of the carcasses. The skulls of too many of these pups are not even fractured.
These baby seals would have been skinned alive.
We finish documenting this carnage and leave to film sealers at their grizzly work. From the air, we see them running across the ice, clubbing baby seals. We set down our helicopters, split into two teams, and move quickly towards them. Our first team is ahead of us. I am moving my team forward as quickly as possible, but this ice is treacherous, with many areas of open water in between large sheets of slick ice. The other team reaches the sealers before we do.
My team reaches the clubbed baby seals, blood spilling out of them, their soft fur now soaked in it. Several are still breathing torturously, blood pouring out of their noses and mouths. The horror of what I am looking at sinks in.
Suddenly, I hear a shout from ahead and see a sealer running after the first team's ice guide with a hakapik. The sealer is only a few feet away from him, grabbing for his camera, blocking him from moving away with his hakapik. I yell out and begin to run towards them, slipping over the ice as I go.
Suddenly, the sealer notices me coming and changes direction. He runs right at me until he is just feet away, his hakapik held high—the metal spike intimidating as he swings it around and around.
I move back as quickly as I can without falling through the ice.
I am not afraid of this man. If he hits me, we will get it on film. But we need to do everything in our power to maintain the 10-meter distance that is a condition of our observation permits. I call out to the others to back away, and then I find myself yelling at the sealer as he chases me—"I am from Newfoundland"—as though that will mean anything to him.
He says he knows exactly who I am and tells me I am not a real Newfoundlander. This is nothing new for me. There are those from my province who believe that anyone with a differing viewpoint is a traitor.
Our camera people have gotten enough footage in this area, and we move across the ice to where another sealer is working. He doesn't mind being filmed, casually asking if anyone has a pack of cigarettes for him.
It is incongruous. This sealer is practically joking with us as his hakapik bashes in the skulls and faces of defenseless pups. Some of them cry out as he advances. But he is merciless. He beats them to death, one after one.
And he is brutal. He hooks live seals out of the water with the spike of his hakapik, dragging their still moving bodies across the ice to a place where he is better able to club them. One seal refuses to die, and he smashes the hakapik into this baby seal's skull, jaw, and side over and over and over again. Our videographer begins to cry.
It occurs to me how obscene it is that these sealers are forcing these three-week-old seals to comprehend this kind of violence. At first, as they hear their friends slaughtered in the distance, they just appear bewildered. But then, they begin to understand. And these babies try so pathetically to defend themselves from these human predators. They rear their heads back and cry at the sealers, assuming the defensive posture of a much older seal. It is heartbreaking.
We finish filming and begin to retreat from this madness back to our helicopters. But just then, a sealer rushes at us, hakapik held high. He holds it menacingly at me, and for a minute I think he might actually strike me. But once we are back at the helicopters, he finally gives up and goes back to killing seals.
We lift off and fly back to the airport to refuel. At the hangar, a call comes in to my cell phone, advising me that activists on the ice have reported more attacks and even gunfire. The upcoming afternoon's trip promises to be interesting.
As we fly back over the hunt area, we see more and more blood on the ice. The boats have been working their way through areas populated with pups, and now there are just carcasses left across the ice.
We land next to a boat named Grand Makasti. This vessel operates with a helicopter, which spots seals for them and slings sealskins across the ice to the boat. It shows how industrial this hunt has become—far away from the public perception of poor unemployed fishermen simply trying to make a living. The owner of such an expensive boat must be a millionaire.
As we move over the ice to where they are clubbing seals, one crewmember runs at us and circles the group menacingly. He has a knife on his belt, and we try to calm him down. But he gets more and more agitated until it probably occurs to him that he is wasting money and time, and he runs back to continue skinning animals.
On the ice, there are blood trails formed by the skidoos that race across the ice, carrying skins back to the boats. In front of me, two clubbed pups lie next to each other. They would have died in front of each other.
We move on to another hunting area. We move in to film the hunters, but they want to prevent us from getting footage. One grabs his skinning knife and runs at us. I get everyone back, but he is advancing quickly. I am the closest to him, and he threatens me with the knife.
We all back up and form a line. He is still threatening us, and we are worried about moving back to the helicopters. If he follows and damages one of our 'copters, we will be in real danger, unable to leave the ice floes.
He yells at us that we are crazy Americans. That President Bush is killing people in Iraq—how dare we criticize him for seal hunting. I yell back in French, "Nous sommes Canadienes. J'habite a Montreal!" (We are Canadian. I live in Montreal.) But he is too enraged to hear. He screams that he has a job—he is here to kill the seals. He asks me what I am doing here.
I reply, "I am here to save the seals. I am here to stop you."
We have had enough, and we retreat to the helicopters. The sealer follows and stands waving his hands in the air as our helicopter starts up. This is very dangerous. If we take off and he throws something into the helicopter blades, we will crash. One helicopter begins to lift off, but just then we see the Coast Guard helicopter land, so we stop.
I think for a second that they are here to arrest him for attempted assault. For threatening us with a knife. But, in a pattern of behavior long since established up here on the ice, they send him back to work and instead check our observation permits. Here at the hunt, the laws exist to protect the sealers.
Threats of assault, even with weapons, are tolerated here. Our cameras are not. This is because the Canadian government and sealing industry know, as we do, that when the world sees what happens up on the ice floes, this hunt will not be allowed to continue.
And in the end, it will be by shaming Canada with the truth that we will save the seals.
