Ocean Sentry
Canada’s DFO has just announced the seal hunt is to begin on Monday, April 9. These seal killers waste no time, so we are expecting a bloody massacre of tens of thousands of defenseless pups to take place within just the first days.
In 2017, 80,924 harp seal pups were killed by fishermen in Atlantic Canada. In just the first three days of sealing, sealers killed 15,748 harp seal pups.
The 2018 slaughter is expected to begin in just a few days.
Fishermen in Canada club and shoot harp seal pups each year in their nurseries on the ice floes. Almost all of the harp seals killed are pups between 3 weeks and 3 months of age.
The slaughter is not only approved by Canada’s government. The government promotes, subsidies and facilitates this slaughter.
In many years, thousands of harp seal pups drown before they are able to swim due to a lack of sturdy sea ice. This year, the sea ice of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a major pupping area, is now very poor. Most of the area is ice-free. This means that most of the seal pups who were born on the ice have probably drowned.
Will Justin Trudeau allow sealers to kill those who have survived the effects of climate change?
Until 2009, the Canadian Coast Guard would cut a path through the ice to help sealers reach the seal herds. This was one of many government subsidies of the seal slaughter. Now it seems that Trudeau may be reinstating this policy.
Source: HarpSeals.org
