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Seal-ing the Deal (or, Join the Club)

By Alison

Harp%20Seal%20471072.jpgIt seems the little recipe our (now)resident shit disturber Ann cooked up (but not literally cooked up – no more e-mails telling us we should be flayed alive, please and thank you) yesterday caused a bit of a stir among the humourless and misinformed. We would like to state for the record that no seals were harmed for the posting of the recipe.
Seriously, though, what alarms us most about the kerfuffle in our in-box is the amount of misinformation that abounds about the seal hunt. And we’re not being accusatory here – we are also grossly underinformed about the seal hunt. So we did a bit of research last night, and dug up a few interesting links that will, hopefully, clarify a few things about the hunt and put an end to the vitriolic e-mails.
-A fact sheet from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans clearly stating that the seal hunt is NOT subsidized by the Canadian government.
-Some background info from the CBC’s website.
-The actual laws regarding the hunt, which are many, and strictly enforced.
-For you anthropology and history buffs, a nifty page detailing the extensive history of the seal hunt in Canada.
We are neither for or against the seal hunt at this point – we have only begun to sift through this information ourselves, and still don’t feel informed enough to form an opinion either way. So instead of an opinion, we’d like to end with another tasteless joke, courtesy of our littlest sister’s friends. They want to open a bar called the Seal Club. Instead of umbrellas in the drinks, there will be little plastic hakapiks.

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Comments

  • Ben

    Oooooh no, you won’t pacify me. There will be no reasonable positions. There will be no informed debate. And there will be no peace until you Torontoist, endorses scarfing seal souvlaki or clubbing seal hunters.
    I demand extremism!!! …and maybe some mayo for this seal and man-cherry sandwich.

  • Colin M

    I’ve always enjoyed “clubbing the baby seal” as a crude sexual euphemism.

  • http://www.newmindspace.com kevin bracken

    i can’t decide what’s better: that cows are farmed or that seals are not.

  • Betty

    What’s with the accompanying image of a whitecoat seal pup? Killing whitecoats was outlawed in 1987. It’s dishonest to use pictures of them when discussing the modern seal hunt.

  • http://www.popfuel.com/ Jeremy Wilson

    Striving to be impartial? I thought this was a blog!

  • Billy

    Ok what about the government going to china and signing a deal to use omega 3 in hospitals? Go to intrafish you will find it. How about business men trying to market penises for tea? For Aphrodesiacs in over populated aids ridden China? Who pays to police the “hunt”? Who pays to break the ice? I could go on and on. This person is not misinformed.
    It is subsidized and all your links are Canadian and from the DFO what do you expect them to say? Oh we pay to market “healthy seal oil” oh we….get a clue, this hunt is for pelts! Do not forget the same org. that is regulating this hunt also regulated the fisheries to collapse.
    Specification of Seal Oil
    Technical Data Sheet
    1. Ingredients 100% Natural Seal Oil with 0.3% D-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate added as anti-oxidant 2. Physical Appearance: A clear, yellowish, oily liquid with pleasant fishy flavour and aroma, The Gardener Colour standard is 2 – 4. 3. Microbiological Specification: Total Aerobic Count:

  • Mark

    I copied and pasted this from another blog!
    Aboriginals a long with Inuits have always shared a deep respect for nature. Your ancestors
    with the Inuits shared strong spiritual beliefs that it was us who were lead to protect the
    life within waters. My great grandfather has written to us on the effects of warming where he lives. He said to us, “It is becoming harder and harder to find the right ice for igloos and the melting of the perma frost is turning our land into a world of mud”. The origins of Aboriginal hunts are similar to ours, for same reasoning, survival. Today is much different world we are live in. The seal need ice to survive as you will know. Ice is becoming problematic, to as soon as five to ten years they may be none or little left for the survival of the seal. What is being done in this day will effect the future of the seal.
    Many predators have been erased in the waters that were once flourishing, I am saddened. The predatory seal is very most important because it is one of the last left. I have diary where my ancestors spoke of walking a top the seal for hundreds of miles. Today more than any day is important to realize all water life is becoming at least guarded at most completely erased. We need to guard all we have left and use it very wisely. This is what is best for all. To annihilate many, many seal as never seen before in a time when there are less seal and the very worst ice conditions, is going to be a disaster. We hope that this hunt does not cause affect on seal that can not be corrected, but we believe by past it will. We are very against the hunt in this number, we are very against the method used, in great numbers such as these, in such short time, will not be humane, can not be humane. The greed of this hunt has stained the very name of my peoples. It has also left us in misery at the waste of a beloved animal that has survived us through the times of the past. We never hunted these numbers, no one has, even when there were millions more and great ice. My people may be afraid to talk, I am not. Fear of Government is natural in our peoples. I am writing to papers because most put us in category with these and call us names.
    We are not these people and can never be like these who kill for money. They waste the very animal deserving respect for allowing survival of their peoples. No aboriginals in history would hunt and waste, to claim that is a lie of their peoples also. Allowing men who came later to change tradition for benefits of money, where they are other ways, is to make little of tradition at all. Stop this doing this to tradition of survival and stop this telling world we kill and spill blood in waste. Soon all that will be left of a great tradition and a love for the animals who allowed my peoples a future and aboriginals a future will come to disgrace. It may already have. Offer of money to stop kill, even if it was for one year was a blessing for peace and allowed the seal to live. You kill only what you have to peoples. To say different of all aboriginals and all my ancestors is to lie on us. It is these men today, in the wrong world, and by getting in ours has destroyed our respect in world and our own country and the respect of our tradition of survival, for the sake of greed and pride. Any who call to God better is prepared for wrath. He will break you like a stick and swallow you whole. You will be left to wallow in our own grief. People that truly live off land do not use computer to argue seal hunt, these men have computers to argue. If they can have computer they can have other job, even if it means to move like we have.
    Tuma

  • danbi

    OH MY. haha.
    Yes, Torontoist, you are right. Many people don’t understand the sealing industry. Nor do they understand the aggregates industry (aggregates you say? yes rocks.), or the forestry industry, or any other ‘resource’ industry because the dirty truth is, we THINK we understand the way the world works and we like to use fancy words for fancy conclusions but the real answer is we DONT KNOW all that much.
    Here’s a brief lesson:
    Seals are considered a resource to humans, and therefore something has to be managed. But think: Fundamentally, what we are managing is HUMAN BEHAVOUR, not the seal population or the purportedley affected fish population.
    I don’t believe nature NEEDS to be managed by humans (as someone has stated in comments from the recipe) because the whole concept of nature is to regulate itself (predator prey etc…talk to any ecologist), humans place themselves in a situation where they have to regulate their behaviour such that their disturbance to the ecosystem balance is somehow mitigated.
    The reality is, our management strategies are based on a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of the science behind the decisions that have to be made is weak because it is VERY DIFFICULT TO MAKE PREDICTIONS ABOUT LIFE UNDERWATER. So governments have to make decisions, but make them based on a lot of uncertainties.
    Seals are culled because it is believed they deplete fish stock by feeding on them. Simple correlation right? More seal, less fish. However, recent science is suggesting that the relationship is more complex than that. Seal behaviour is believed to create local environmental conditions that are more favourable for specific fish stock. The more seal, more fish. WHAT? Suprised? no. All resource management issues run into this…back and forth business. And resource managers must deal with that, and make decisions fast. Sometimes mistakes are made, sometimes they’re right on the nose.
    That’s life. The best thing we can do is look at a problem more objectively. Of course, policies are not always effective, but let’s take a closer look at what we are trying to affect. Maybe the solution shouldn’t start at the sealing stage. Maybe it should start at the consumer stage.
    More demand for fish -> more fish farming and harvesting -> higher perception from fishers that seals are eating all their fish -> larger demand for seal culls -> more money spent on research that’s crap because there’s never enough time -> conclusions that only sound good because they have to, to make the opposition shut up.
    You see where it starts?

  • Timmy

    Sounds like a boycott to me, decrease demand for the fish. YEP! Let the seal have them. Fine with me. If anyone wants to kill the seal for the fish, I’ll eat something else. TYVM!

  • danbi

    A boycott? No, just consumer moderation. But keep in mind there are demands for Canadian fish internationally. And there are fishing wars over who can fish in what waters, so demands on a single fish stock are doubled or tripled. This is why fish farms were created. So where do we start?
    and…just to twist it a bit…let’s assume more seal = less fish. Fish stocks are overharvested right now, so there are less fish anyway. So less fish = fewer seal, and a seal hunt ban becomes less effective when it comes down to the wire (in other words, it won’t make much of a difference!).
    what’s TYVM? I know of TVP…and it smells like dog food.

  • danbi

    also, did you know that seal and cod compete for the same prey? Fish vs. seal for herring! With the depleted cod stocks, seals may have more herring to feed on. But more herring means more consumed zooplankton, leading to a dramatic decrease in their food and a bust of their population. They bring themselves to their own demise!
    oh, ecology. I love you.

  • http://wrenkin.net Wrenkin

    “For Aphrodesiacs in over populated aids ridden China?”
    So what do you disapprove of? That they’re killing seals to make something as silly as aphrodisiacs? Or that they’re selling aphrodisiacs to people who don’t deserve to have sex?

  • mark

    Title Canadian Total Exports
    Industries NAICS 31171 – Seafood Product Preparation and Packaging
    Origin CANADA
    Destination TOP 10 COUNTRIES
    Period Latest 5 years
    Units Value in Thousands of Canadian Dollars
    2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
    United States (U.S.) 1,951,947 2,061,542 1,963,980 1,856,299 1,664,451
    Japan 395,487 540,983 454,761 462,348 421,585
    China 108,395 205,484 247,695 284,855 299,377
    Denmark 68,244 105,319 104,777 104,830 98,749
    United Kingdom (U.K.) 93,171 64,685 87,701 104,868 95,310
    France (incl. Monaco, French Antilles) 56,785 56,977 68,602 58,259 56,779
    Russia 8,494 3,035 2,190 19,966 39,451
    Hong Kong 21,468 25,337 32,181 33,851 37,206
    Germany 37,010 22,992 38,480 38,591 28,175
    Thailand 25,250 38,270 36,841 33,195 26,217
    SUB-TOTAL 2,766,252 3,124,624 3,037,207 2,997,062 2,767,300
    OTHERS 257,795 319,422 298,408 320,634 349,204
    TOTAL (ALL COUNTRIES) 3,024,047 3,444,046 3,335,615 3,317,696 3,116,503
    Source of data: Statistics Canada
    Report Date: 12-Apr-2006
    Hard to read but it is here. Add three zeros to the end of the numbers. Not calling anyone dumb, just trying to help.
    Pay close attention to the countries. This is not the first year of the boycott only the first year it has been upped to full protest mode.
    http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/canadian_industry_statistics/cis.nsf/IDE/cis31171inte.html
    click on total export- top ten countries by destination-latest 5 years.

  • mark

    I disapprove of A) seal penises being black marketed
    B) china having babies expecially girls. C)promoting aphrodesiacs as powder for teas… it somehow seems so immoral….weird even. I dunno. I do know you can not tell the sex of the seal at the age they are killed until they are dead. I do know some of the evidence presented in court was the same number pelt as penis, 7 student scientist testified and had pictures, and other evidence.
    Which makes one ask what happened to the female pelts? But the conclusion would be, keep the best pelts and all the penises. I suppose. Or there were only boys that year.
    Not that anyone ask me. Was not my comment.

  • mark

    tyvm is thank you very much BTW ….lol

  • Gloria

    Wait, you disapprove of Chinese people having *babies*?

  • http://photo.jamestilberg.com James

    Why are seals any more important than fish? And vice-versa.

  • danbi

    haha. TYVM..i get it now…wow.
    Anyway, how’d this go from seals to babies in China? I guess that supports the ‘complex system’ theory about this issue. seals are not more important than fish, and fish are not more important than seals. it’s all relative, no? unless you are confusing ‘importance’ with market value, in which case I’m not sure because i’m no economist. But my gut instinct tells me the fishing industry is MUCH larger than the seal industry (not considering a ‘black market’). And here’s another thing, sealing occurs in other northern countries too, but Canada’s getting the end of the stick because of Paul McCartney. I feel a seal song coming along.
    Here’s a useful site from the CBC that may answer some of your questions. Not about Chinese babies or seal penisis.
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sealhunt/

  • Gloria

    Not much brouhaha over whaling in Japan either. Then again, I’d have Pocky over maple syrup any day.

  • http://www.boyreporter.ca Boy Reporter

    This is the most policy wonk like discussion I’ve ever seen on this site. I’ve seen Senate Comissions with less data than this comment thread! Amazing.

  • mark

    I guess china can have all the babies they want, but putting the girls in the street is the horror of that.
    It did not go from seal penises to babies, the babies in china were just a reason to keep sexual stimulants as far from them as possible.
    The whale issue is a different issue all together, but hey if you can not do everything about everything, just do nothing at all, right?
    And you are right, the fishing industry is bigger than the seal industry, but has collapsed for the most part in NL area, many blame the seal for the collapse. Get rid of seal, you get the fish. This is no lie, it was a policy that was implied, cull the seal to replenish cod stocks, it still has not worked. The truth is the stocks are totally wrecked, the fishery is becoming a complete disaster. There is scientific data against this plan all over the place.
    Here is a site that addressess killing seal to save fish…It is a polish site…they tried it…
    http://www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=35299&j=2

  • http://amy-m.blogspot.com Amy McKie

    As someone from Prince Edward Island… I would advise people to look at all the implications before saying to ban the hunt.
    I realize that there are many people against the seal hunt – to these people I would ask
    – How would you choose to control the seal population otherwise?
    - How would you compensate the fishers participating in the seal hunt?
    - How would you compensate all the fishermen whose livelihoods would be affected by the overpopulation of seals?
    - And lastly, how would you keep the economy stable in the region with this loss of income and with the damage to the whole fishing industry?

  • mark

    A) the seal population does not need human intervention, in fact scientific evidence now states seal are needed as one of the last large marine predators.
    B,C,D) The fish stocks have seen no improvement from the culling of the seal. Either way a future must be planned for these people, global warming is going to effect the seal population anyway. this can also be an answer to A. New evidence shows that culling the seal affects the fisheries in a negative way. Making for sickly stock. By not allowing for a natural cull, by the removal of other marine predator species in the area, cod, shark…etc..
    It also shows that mass carnage left to rot causes adverse affects, such as a depletion of oxygen in already oxygen depleted waters.
    I admit there is no easy answer, but someone has got to find a “REAL ANSWER” for these people before it is too late, eventually (probably sooner than later), even the sealing industry will go the way of the fishery.
    If the trust is layed into the hands of the DFO and they disappoint us the way they have in the past, the seal population will be culled to endangerment. The question is, do we trust the DFO?
    http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj17/mason1.html
    Do we know the adverse affects all the way around in removing one of the last marine predators in the North Atlantic?
    I believe that it will have a worse affect all the way around the block, by removing the seal in this large a number, and will eventually hurt these people worse tomorrow by waiting to find a solution to the economics problems involved today.

  • mandy

    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/04/14/1534832-cp.html
    PEI is making a smart decision for the future. Way to go PEI!