Commercial seal hunt added threat as animals’ habitat deteriorates: Non-profit

Animal advocates who have been calling for an end to the controversial commercial seal hunt in Atlantic Canada for decades are now sounding the alarm, saying climate change’s effects to the animals’ sea ice habitat has added another threat to their existence.

The annual hunt, which recently started up, sees commercial sealers hunting young harp seals for their fur in areas off the East Coast, including in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the Northeast coast of Newfoundland.

Humane Society International (HSI) Canada’s Executive Director tells CityNews, in the Northwest Atlantic, ice is forming later in the year, is more fragile because it’s thinner, and it’s also breaking up earlier in the season.

“That’s having a profound impact on harp seals, which are ice-breeding animals,” said Rebecca Aldworth. “That means that the seals rely on the sea ice to give birth to their pups and they need that ice to remain intact long enough for their pups to be strong enough to survive in open waters,” which she adds is at least a few weeks.

Seals, Aldworth explained, are legally allowed to be hunted when they are 12 days old, the age when they begin to shed their fur.

Aldworth said HSI Canada is not campaigning to end subsistence hunting of seals by Indigenous people.

“We’re trying to end a non-Indigenous activity that occurs off of Canada’s East Coast that is opposed by people all over the world,” adding that “governments around the world have taken action to stop the trade and the products of.”

Dozens of countries, some with exemptions to products from hunts by Inuit and Indigenous communities, have put a ban on imported seal products, including the European Union, U.S., Mexico, Taiwan, and Russia.

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Aldworth said Canada has found “the deteriorating sea ice conditions are causing a decline in reproductive rates for harp seals and mass mortality in seal pups and that is projected to continue.”

“No government can stop the impacts of climate change in the immediate term, but what we can control right now is the commercial seal hunt,” Aldworth said. “There is no responsible government that would allow a commercial slaughter to target a species that is ice dependent and whose habitat is steadily disappearing.”

HSI Canada has found more than 98 per cent of the seals killed during the commercial hunt are less than three months old, and 8,000 seals have already been killed this year.

Aldworth also said with the commercial hunt taking place miles offshore, and out of public view, “there is no way for the Canadian government to effectively monitor the killing,” and calls the federal regulations in place “inhumane.”

“What I’ve seen every year that I go out there are baby seals being beaten to death with wooden bats and an instrument known as a hakapik,” Aldworth said. “I see seals shot at long distances and wounded, left crawling through their own blood trying to escape over the side of the water. Sometimes they do manage to get into the water, at which point they’re very rarely retrieved and they often die very slowly and painfully.”

“When you think that these animals are a few weeks old at the time that this is happening to them it’s almost unimaginable the suffering that this industry causes all to produce fur coats that nobody needs, and frankly nobody wants,” she said.

Calling harp seals a vital part of the ecosystem in the Northwest Atlantic, she said they help keep fish species healthy and abundant.

“There’s very few top predators left in the ocean eco-system, most of them have been fished or slaughtered into commercial extinction,” Aldworth said. “Harp seals remain one of the last sort of viable top predator populations in the world.”

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans could not provide a spokesperson for an interview, but it did send a statement to CityNews.

“The Government of Canada supports a sustainable, humane and well-regulated seal harvest and recognizes its importance to Indigenous, rural and coastal communities,” it wrote. “The harvesting of seal pups is illegal in Canada and has been since 1987.”

The DFO said in response to recommendations by the Independent Veterinarians Working Group in 2009, Canada has a science-based, three-step process to make sure seals are quickly and humanely harvested, which is rooted in law under Canada’s Marine Mammal Regulations.

“Canada monitors the seal harvest to ensure compliance with regulations, conducts important science work on the health of seal populations, and ensures that ice conditions are safe for harvesters,” it wrote.

It goes on to say participation in the seal fishery, as well as market demand, has been low and the number of seals harvested continues to be within the sustainable levels recommended by science. The DFO said no quotas, the total allowable catches, have been set since 2016 as removals have been within sustainable levels.

According to federal data, in 2016 there were around 66,800 harp seals commercially harvested, and it said that same year, there were approximately 9,710 commercial seal licence holders — with less than an estimated 1,000 sealers active.

That approximate count of harp seals in 2016 is a decline compared to the count in the government’s earliest year shown online, 2012, which was around 312,000 animals.

Federal data also shows the Northwest Atlantic harp seal population is considered “healthy and abundant” with an estimated 7.4 million animals.

“Harvest levels continue to be closely monitored in relation to the most recent science advice to ensure scientifically determined and advised catch levels are not exceeded,” the government said. “Should this situation change, additional management action will be considered.”

A hunter heads towards a harp seal during the annual East Coast seal hunt in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence around Quebec’s Iles de la Madeleine, March 25, 2009. Sealers are calling for more commercial licences – and even a possible cull – to protect fragile caplin and northern cod stocks from an upsurge in seal populations. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

“This [commercial seal hunt] is an industry that exists on government handouts and subsidies, if it were left to market forces it would have ended decades ago.” Aldworth said.

HSI Canada has proposed a fair-transition program to the federal government for those working in the commercial seal hunt industry in efforts to bring in marine eco-tourism instead.

“What makes these communities such sites of commercial sealing is their proximity to marine life,” Aldworth said. “But that also makes them perfect places for the development of marine eco-tourism and that is a growing industry all over the world.”

“It’s already been demonstrated to bring in far more money to coastal communities than commercial slaughter ever could,” she said. “All that it takes is a political mind shift. We need government to see the opportunity in responsible, sustainable, eco tourism and to invest in building that industry on the east coast of Canada.”

Aldworth said HSI Canada is working carefully to make sure any trade bans it’s involved in achieving have clear exemptions for products of traditional Indigenous slaughters and to make sure that there is strong consultation in the crafting of those regulations to ensure the existence of subsistence sealing is reflected in the actions taken around the world.