Canada's annual seal hunt...Photos (Warning: graphic content)

[Matrix Heart]

Photo Gallery
http://www.signonsandiego.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=seals&page=1

Watch the video in Real media
http://stream.realimpact.net/?file=realimpact/hsus/seal-hunt/death-of-a-seal.rm

Watch the video in Windows Media
http://stream.realimpact.net/?file=realimpact/hsus/seal-hunt/death-of-a-seal.wmv&type=wmv


CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island – Protesters alighting from helicopters to try to stop a seal hunt scuffled Friday with sealers who fired warning shots – sending the protesters scurrying back to the aircraft.

Canada's harp seal hunt, the target of protests since the 1960s, began this week when thousands of sealers armed with clubs, rifles and spears headed for the ice floes off eastern Canada for the world's largest such hunt.

Canada says the hunt brings $16.5 million in badly needed income to its coastal communities, primarily from pelt sales to Norway{Damn you Jome }, Denmark and China. Animal activists condemn the hunt as barbaric. The United Stats bans imports of seal products.

Protesters arrived by helicopters Friday, and a sealer approached swinging a 12 foot stick with a hook. At one point, a snowmobile carrying two sealers hurtled toward the activists but swung away at the last moment.

The two groups started shoving each other, when several shots were fired into the air by a sealer aboard a boat, and the protesters retreated to their helicopters. Protesters included members of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

No one was hurt.

The protesters are required to keep at least 10 yards from the sealers.

Michel Therien, a spokesman for Canada's Fisheries and Oceans Department, said three protesters were arrested on Thursday for violating the distance regulations.

Paul Watson, captain of the protest ship Farley Mowat, said he saw one sealer attack a member of his crew on the ice Thursday. The sealer said he was just defending himself.

The seal hunt begins about two weeks after the seal pups are born and before their fur changes from white to gray. Animal rights activists say the pups are clubbed to death and often skinned alive, but sealers and government officials insist the pups die instantly, under strict guidelines.

Aboriginal and Inuit subsistence and commercial hunters begin the kill Nov. 15 in Canada's vast expanse of frozen Northern waters, which reach from the Yukon Territories near Alaska through the Arctic Ocean and down into the North Atlantic off Labrador.

The spring leg of the commercial hunt starts in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and moves to the Front, an arc of the Atlantic Ocean sweeping out 30 to 40 miles from Newfoundland. Hunters were expected to kill more than 300,000 seals by May 15.

Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans says the country's seal population is "healthy and abundant," and notes that there are an estimated 5 million harp seals, nearly the highest level ever recorded and almost triple what it was in the 1970s.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050401-1207-canada-sealhunt.html

[Suga Foot]

it's those damn Eskimos! 

edit:

I just looked at those pictures, that shit is digusting!  I don't understand how people could do that. 

[Matrix Heart]

it's those damn Eskimos! 

I just looked at those pictures, that shit is digusting!  I don't understand how people could do that. 

Atleast use an arrows etc... but they're beating/hooking those seals to death.

[Da WCC Hopar!]

dats some crazy shit but hey wat can i say its still hunting and its legeal

[Wild_Elmo]

the hunters are just trying to feed their families

[Twentytwofifty]

the hunters are just trying to feed their families

They should try going to this crazy place called a grocery store.

[Big BpG]

That's disgusting... seals have no chance to getaway... it's like stabbing a baby human

[Mindless Minority]

it's like stabbing a baby human

Except it's a seal

[white Boy]

the hunters are just trying to feed their families

They should try going to this crazy place called a grocery store.

lol and cosign, btw this shit is terrible, fuckin canadians

[Big BpG]

it's like stabbing a baby human

Except it's a seal

What's your point sir...

[Sikotic™]

Hey.....when ya gotta eat, ya gotta eat.

[Noname]

You canadians are some mean mothafuckers.

[-Euthanasia-]

there are no damn seals in canada. PEI doent count

[Sikotic™]

This is nothing compared to the way cattle and poultry are treated.

[Don Seer]

these lefties forget where mankind comes from..