March 15, 2006
Turning a blind eye to public concerns about the cruelty and the sustainability of the annual commercial seal hunt, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced this year’s harp seal quota. The verdict: A quota increase that will allow fishermen to slaughter 325,000 seals.
The quota announcement came as an ominous precursor to the fast-approaching hunt. When considered through the lens of a new study by world-renowned conservation biologist Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University, the quota figures also paint a grim picture for the longterm outlook of the harp seal population.
Under the DFO's watch in the 1950s and 1960s, the population of harp seals sunk to dangerously low levels because fishermen were given leave to rampantly kill seals. With the population only now recovering, the DFO has responded by raising the quota to numbers rivaling those slaughtered annually in the 1950s and 1960s.
Justifying the quota increase to the press, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, a Newfoundland native, said that "Canada's harp seal herd is a conservation success story. The herd is healthy and thriving."
The HSUS’s Director of Canadian Wildlife Issues, Rebecca Aldworth, responded, noting that it is impossible to hold any faith in the DFO's statements about the sustainability of the hunt. "The DFO has a long and documented track record of overestimating marine populations and allowing species to be fished to commercial extinction."
The DFO also has a history of not enforcing the quotas it sets. In 2004, for example, the government set a quota of 350,000 seals—and yet, when sealers killed nearly 16,000 seals in excess of that quota, the sealers were not penalized.
A Fatally Flawed Management Plan
Many marine scientists find the DFO's model for estimating harp seal populations—a model from which the agency claims to arrive at each quota—highly questionable. The most recent analysis, the Harris study, delivers a striking indictment. It points out an essential weakness in the DFO’s model, noting that the estimates for harp seal populations are based on assumptions. It notes that, currently, "There is no direct way to measure harp seal populations."
Furthermore, the report finds that the DFO "fails to take into account many variables that can affect harp seal numbers. These include environment unpredictability, climate change and the bioaccumulation of anthropogenic toxins, which in turn reduce reproductive rates and increase mortality. When so many variables are unknown, a precautionary approach should be applied. However, no such measure is applied to the Canadian management plan."
In fact, this year's quota has been set with no regard for the dramatically warm temperatures in the seal nursery of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The temperatures could lead to melting ice pans and result in the death by drowning of many baby seals who are not able to swim in the first weeks of their lives. According to the new study, such irresponsibility on the part of the DFO has already caused the collapse of several Canadian fisheries (the important cod fishery, for example) and could lead to a similar disaster with harp seals.
The World Will Be Watching
In the next few weeks, an unimaginable cruelty awaits the 325,000 seals who make up the quota figure, animals who will die in agony at the hands of sealers wielding picks, clubs, and guns. Every year witnesses report sealers allowing baby seals to slowly bleed to death from their wounds. They report watching sealers skinning animals who are still alive and trying helplessly to escape.
Pat Ragan, director of The HSUS's ProtectSeals campaign, vows that she, Aldworth, and the rest of the seal team will once again travel to the ice next week to witness and document the slaughter. "As long as this senseless slaughter continues, The HSUS will be there to give the seals a voice, and ensure that this atrocity is publicized throughout the world."
