Canada's cruel slaughter set for late March

[RoxyBoxer]

oh and they usually leave the young ones alone and go for the males by the way....and yes they do sell them for profit, id like to see you all go spend a day there and see how life is like. No mcdonalds or subway, some places don't even have cars, they live right beside the ocean and its not like they can go out and get a job in an insurance company or something similair.

[~Fox~Trot~]

OMG! That is horrible!

[Dixie]

Originally Posted by RoxyBoxer

As bad as I sometimes feel for the baby seals...well im from this horrible east coast and well...lets put it this way. 8 hours by plane away from the real world, all my family has and always will live off the fish. They depend on cod to survive, its the only source of income and the only jobs available are in the summer. So what happens when the seal poplulation goes up 4 times in size and start taking down the fish number?? well its okay to put the deer limit up and start killing fawns and younger deer when there population goes up?? my uncle is one of the few (no they do not go out and kill 30000 seals at a time) but have you ever seen 45 000 seals in one place? I have...and it makes you think, thats a heck of a lot of fish there eating, and thats alot of competition to deal with, not to mention that have the support of the government and fish and game officers to 'bash the baby seals over the head' and they are NOT SKINNED ALIVE!!! do you pluck chickens alive?? when there are to many of one species it has to be dealt with. its the balance of the ecosystem. so pretty much what Im saying, to many seals, problem will be dealt with. no one writes emails and crys about the poor little fawn that got shot in the bushes and eaten for christmas dinner. no one whines about the amounts of wild turkeys and geese shot and killed every year? And im confused why not eating lobster will help the baby seals??

YAY!! Someone who has commone sense!

Now I will say this HSUS is little more than a political group that is paying money to politicians and certain companies to publish and spread mis-information. Clubbing a seal isnt exactly allowed and those who do club seals are the ones that are giving the rest of the canadian fishermen a bad name. Sorry folks but all it takes is just one bad apple and one money hungry politician to blow things out of proportion.

And the numbers they publish are unreasonably high. Think about what you read, do your homework, get the correct information.

And as for snow-crabs and king-crabs, the fisherman that fish for crab are literally putting their lives on the line to put food on the table for their families. They work 18 to 24 hours straight to bring in what they hope will be a good catch. They work in cold-wet conditions risking hypothermia, and in some cases they work while battling the flu or even pnuemonia that they have developed while working. They risk being thrown overboarding into freezing waters- if not rescued within 5 minutes, they are given a death sentence, because the water is so cold they go unconscious almost immediately. There is no medical doctor onboard. For many people in fishing communities, this is their livilihood, this is their means of survival. If you take this away from them, you have taken away their ability to provide for their families.

HSUS does have good intentions but they are NOT the Humane Society. They are more worried about the killing of seals in Canada, when there are people here who beat their dogs with baseball bats daily.

Think about it.

Dix

[okpik]

Here, here. Put me on the top o the food chain fish eatin' list.
Like any environmental region, humans have killed or taken out the apex predator from the mix. Without whales and large sharks to thin herds of seals and other mamals, they need thinning another way to maintain a balance.

As RoxyBoxer stated, bleeding heart groups will always exist and have the right to feel the way they want but state both sides of a story clearly.
Have we learned nothing from PEDA's rantings only to be caught with their pants down.

Save the Whale,...Collect the whole set!!

[Saje]

I don't live in that area but I do know that there is no difference between killing seals and killing any other animal. I just hope that all animals that 'have' to be killed are done so humanely. I know I can't stop it but I avoid contributing to the market too.

[vanillasugar]

While I don't really agree with the seal hunt, and think it needs some serious re-evaluation about the way it's carried out, it DOES have a purpose, and will not ever go away completley.

I do not see how boycotting Canadian seafood and seriously crippling an already faltering industry is going to help anything. I consider Canadian fishermen to be some of the hardest working people in this country, and they already have practically nothing to show for it. The fish populations are dangerously depleted as it is, making these men (and women) work their bones to survive. Why make them suffer more?

[RoxyBoxer]

Actually they use guns, were not cavemen, im not even sure how 'clubbing' came about inm these ages. I worked in a fish factory this summer and after 12 hours in feezing cold water cleaning snow crab...well im sure if there were others ways of income we'de be all for it. hey I have an idea lets boycott beef cause its from cows raised all there lives to die----sarcasm) thanks Dixie and the rest of you for having some common sense

[Boxer*Mom]

Originally Posted by Saje

I just hope that all animals that 'have' to be killed are done so humanely. I know I can't stop it but I avoid contributing to the market too.

Couldn't of said it better.

The Canadian Marine Mammal Regulations, which govern the hunt, stipulate sealers may kill seals with wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, clubs and hakapiks are the killing implement of choice, and in the Front, guns are more widely used.

It is important to note that each killing method is demonstrably cruel. Because sealers shoot at seals from moving boats, the pups are often only wounded. The main sealskin processing plant in Canada deducts $2 from the price they pay for the skins for each bullet hole they find—therefore sealers are loath to shoot seals more than once. As a result, wounded seals are left to suffer in agony—many slip beneath the surface of the water where they die slowly and are never recovered.

The scientific community agrees that the true cause of the depletion of fish stocks off Canada's East Coast is human over-fishing. Blaming seals for disappearing fish is a convenient way for the fishing industry to divert attention from its irresponsible and environmentally destructive practices that continue today.

In truth, seals, like all marine mammals, are a vital part of the ecosystem of the Northwest Atlantic. Harp seals, which are the primary target of the hunt, are opportunistic feeders, meaning they consume small amounts of many different species. So while approximately 3% of a harp seal's diet may be commercially fished cod, harp seals also eat many significant predators of cod, such as squid. That is why some scientists are concerned that culling harp seals could further inhibit recovery of commercially valuable fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic.

Are Seals Overpopulated?
No. The Canadian government and sealing industry have, at various times, tried to claim that the harp seal population has "tripled" over the past three decades, or that the harp seal population is "exploding," or that seals are overpopulated.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The harp seal population in the Northwest Atlantic is the world's largest—it is supposed to number in the many millions. This is a migratory population that spans the distance between Canada and Greenland.

In the 1950s and 1960s, over-hunting wiped out close to two-thirds of the harp seal population. By 1974, the population was considered to be in serious trouble, and senior government scientists recommended the commercial hunt be suspended for at least ten years.

In the early 1980s, the European Union banned the import of whitecoat seal skins, effectively removing the principal market for the hunt at the time. For the next decade, the numbers of seals killed in the hunt dramatically declined, and the harp seal population began to recover.

However, according to the last survey conducted by the Canadian government in 1999, the harp seal population stopped recovering in 1996 (when the commercial seal hunt was reintroduced) and began to decline. With more than a million seal pups killed over the past three years alone, we can only wonder what the impact will be on the harp seal population over the coming years.

[Amstaffer]

Originally Posted by Dixie

YAY!! Someone who has commone sense!
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Think about it.

I love how people find a million ways to justify killing other creatures. Survival, Culture, Hunger etc... when in the end it usually about greed.

[casablanca1]

Originally Posted by Boxer*Mom

I just read this in my email. ANyone know more information?

Not to put myself on the front lines of being pro-seal bashing, but the HSUS is a nightmare organization and their involvement makes me think this issue is more complicated than greedy bastards v. baby marine mammals.