Brent Warren

About 40 protesters, clad in red signifying blood, rallied against Canada's annual seal hunt for the International Day of Action Against Seal Hunting on 17th Avenue in Calgary on March 15

Squirming in a pool of its own thick, red blood, a baby harp seal, still molting its white baby fur, gasps for air with blood bubbling out of its nose.

It's seal slaughter season in Canada again, the largest massacre of marine mammals on the planet. Though it is illegal to do so, activists over the years have managed to film the bloodbath, and gruesome footage of this is widely available on YouTube. The bloody killing methods have fuelled continued opposition to the hunt.

The Canadian government has set this year's total allowable catch (TAC) of harp seals at 275,000, up from 270,000 last year. There are about 5.5 million harp seals in Canada. And though many critics approve of traditional Inuit seal hunting, it only accounts for three per cent of the TAC.

Though the commercial hunt for harp and hooded seals is from November 15 to May 15, the majority of the sealing, about 70 per cent, occurs in late March off the Magdalen Islands, and in early April on the Front in Newfoundland and Labrador. This year the harvest began on March 28.

Loyola Hearn, minister of fisheries and oceans, recently announced amendments to sealing standards with an extra step added to make sure the animals are dead before they are skinned.

When asked if killing quotas or methods might be changed in the future, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) had no comment and responded only with references to the recently publicized report confirming the government feels the harvest is “humane.”

However, Karen Orr, spokesperson for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a 31-year-old marine conservation group (an offshoot of Greenpeace) that uses direct intervention to protect marine wildlife using patrol and research vessels, calls the new regulations a joke.

“We call it ‘slash and bash,’” says Orr. “The new rule calls for seals to be bashed four times instead of one and then to have their arteries under their flippers severed, so they bleed to death.”

Orr says seal pups can be killed when they molt their fluffy white coat after 12 days of age. And more than 95 per cent of seals killed are less than three months old. Most have not yet eaten their first solid meal or learned how to swim. “Often times, what happens, since baby seals cannot yet swim, they will get clubbed or shot and get away and fall into the water and drown,” she says.

A study of the 2001 Canadian seal hunt conducted by five independent veterinarians commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare concluded 42 per cent of baby seals were skinned alive, their bodies left to rot on the ice floes. However, a separate 2002 report produced by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association contradicts this fact, stating that an “issue of contention has been the ‘swimming reflex,’” which are convulsions caused when seals are killed by acute trauma to the brain, implying persistence of conscious life.

At the height of the controversy is the fact that seals are beaten with wooden clubs or hakapiks (large ice-picks) then dragged by their noses — sometimes with flippers still flapping — across the ice. This gory method of harvesting seals, however, is not the only one available. Seal hunters in Norway, for example, are only allowed to use rifles to kill seals.

Because bullet holes decrease pelt value by $2 per hole, Canadian sealers are reluctant to use guns. In 2007 the average price per pelt received by sealers was about $52. The total value of the harp seal hunt was $12 million.

Sealing is an off-season activity for commercial fishermen who earn roughly 95 per cent of their income from the fishing industry. Estimates of annual income generated by seal pelts seem to vary widely depending on the source. Activists question the financial importance of the hunt, claiming it is merely five per cent of fishermen’s income, while the DFO reports 25 to 35 per cent, depending on the market value of the pelts. Sealing accounts for perhaps less than one per cent of Newfoundland's Gross Domestic Product and just two per cent of its fishing industry.

Countries that buy seal products include China, Russia and Norway. There is no market for seal meat, so carcasses are either dumped in the ocean or left on the ice. Many countries such as the United States, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Mexico have stopped their trade in Canadian seal products.

The Humane Society of the United States started a Canadian seafood boycott campaign three years ago called ProtectSeals. Since the campaign started, more than half a million individuals and 3,500 businesses, including Whole Foods Market, have pledged to avoid some or all Canadian seafood until the commercial seal hunt is ended.

“Whole Foods Market is continuing the suspension of any purchase of seafood from the areas where the brutal killing of baby seals is taking place until the fishermen commit to stopping this practice,” says Ashley Hawkins, spokesperson for Whole Foods Market. The European Commission is considering proposing legislation that would ban seal product trade in the European Union.

Sealers are protected by the Seal Protection Regulations that make it a federal offense to witness or document, without a permit, a seal pup being killed. Seal hunt opponents doing so risk fines of up to $100,000 or a one-year prison sentence.

Observation permits, which must be renewed daily, are issued by the DFO, which conducts a personal interview and criminal background check. Observers must remain 10 metres away from those engaged in seal hunting.

Sea Shepherd's Karen Orr says that last year the sealers exposed themselves, threw seal innards at activists and rammed into the Humane Society's vessel, for which the latter was charged.

Red-clad protesters across the country rallied against the seal hunt on March 15, the International Day of Action Against Seal Hunting. Many at the protest suggested eco-tourism could be a more lucrative option for sealers.

“I'm sure a lot of tourists would pay money to travel to see the seals,” Orr says. Harp seals aren't on any endangered list yet, but I fail to see why a species has to be driven to the brink before anyone will stop it. And all this for fur, it's quite shameful. If the market for fur were killed, then there would be no need to kill seals.”

Tamara Goertz is a freelance journalist and occasional Fast Forward contributor specializing in international human rights and development issues.