SYDNEY, N.S. - Sealers and anti-sealing activists performed a delicate dance Monday as they tried to reveal as little of their plans as possible while they await the start of the grey seal hunt on Hay Island off Cape Breton.
Fishermen haven't said who their buyer is or where the seals will be processed once the hunt begins, likely later this week.
Activists with the Humane Society International are staying at a hotel in Sydney waiting for the hunt to proceed so they can document it with video and still photography.
The activists have a boat ready to launch but didn't want it photographed because of concerns about interference.
They said they've had problems in the past, but have been well treated since arriving in Sydney a week ago.
"We've been mobbed three times in Newfoundland. ... We've had vehicles damaged," Rebecca Aldworth, a humane society executive, said Monday. "That said, this is a great city. I haven't felt worried at all here."
Aldworth said polls and experience show there is a "real divide" in Cape Breton on how people feel about the seal hunt.
The federal government authorized a grey seal hunt on Hay Island, starting Feb. 8 and ending March 15, but fishermen have been waiting on shore for more than a week.
Sealers must give 24 hours notice of their intention to hunt. They won't be going out Tuesday, although a spokesman said they hope to go out this week.
Robert Courtney, president of the North of Smokey Fishermen's Association, said sealers are waiting for the weather to improve and for the buyer to line up trucks for the pelts.
He refused to say who the buyer was or where the trucks would go, saying the buyer "doesn't want trouble."
Sealers only harvested 256 grey seals last year, including 200 from Hay Island. This year, the government quota is set at 2,200 grey seals from the island.
Andrew Newbould, an adviser for the federal Fisheries Department, said Monday the longer fishermen wait, the fewer animals will be available to hunt.
Aldworth said the federal government should offer fishermen $10,000 or $20,000 as a buyout to stop the seal hunt altogether, but Courtney dismissed that idea.
"What are they suggesting we do with the seals?" he asked. "It's ridiculous. The ocean can't sustain what's there now.
"To let the whole herd ... expand at that rate with no harvest, that'd be suicide for the seals. Once you get overpopulation, there's a number of things that happen and none of them are good."
Sealers, activists keeping tight-lipped about plans for start of N.S. hunt
- Published on Febuary 16th, 2010
- Published on Febuary 20th, 2010
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The Canadian Press
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Comments
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- JG
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:32:06
The seals have to go. And as far as protesters from Europe, clean up your own backyard. The killing of bulls is slow and painful and they actually call that a sport. Pitiful.
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- Devon
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:32:06
The Humane Society International should be more concerned with animal species in trouble and less with the harp seal which numbers close to 6 million.
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- craig
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:32:02
Cultural intolerance is all this protest is about. Lets all hope and pray the protesters get a little too close again and have their boat seized (and sold).
These protesters should keep going across the Atlantic to Spain and protest a REAL senseless slaughter called bullfighting.
Ahh, just remembered Bulls are not cute, typically when you look at them they have snot and mucus hanging from their snout. -
- Ellaquenada
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:31:56
I fail to understand why people actually believe the lies regarding seals, being told by the federal government.
It is a psychological fact that the average person is apt to believe a big lie while not swallowing a small one. Adolf Hitler recognized this method of fooling the people and said that they do not recognize a large lie because of their lack of mental power, but that they are able to detect small lies because they themselves often tell them.
Many of the people who believe things like, seals are taking all the fish or there are too many seals and they will die of starvation, and so on, could easily learn otherwise if they chose to do so. But they dont.
There is a difference between ignorance and willful ignorance. The little bits of misinformation supporters of the seal hunt have, they pass back and forth to each other. They make no real attempt to learn or know anything else. They are, in short, willfully ignorant. Such willful ignorance, which does not prevent them from proclaiming utter lies at the hands of the federal government, also means they are stupid. They have the means to find the truth, or at very least both sides of the argument, but they deliberately choose not to do so, and go on year after year spouting lies, even against their own best interests.
Stupid is as stupid does. -
- PictouCountyGuy
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:31:55
Leave the sealers alone! They have a job to do so let them do it. These activists are just a bunch of idiots looking for limelight in the press, and they obviously got nothing better to do.
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- dave
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:31:49
This topic has always been touchy craig but your uneducated in this matter, the matter they are protesting is the manner in which they are being killed, they will be taking video's of people clubbing seals and that doesnt sit well with alot of people. I too agree that seals are becoming over populated and must be hunted but perhaps there is a better way of doing so. there are sharks that are being hunted whales being poached and many species being put at risk every day, thats the habitat that us humans have created, we are built on unlimited growth unlimited potential economy where nature and its resources are seen as a commodity and this has to stop.
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- Bob the Butcher
- - February 22nd, 2010 at 13:31:46
I have a great idea. Instead of clubbing them, shoot them. You could have target practice from the ship deck. You could have tourist packages and let the tourists shoot them from the ship. After, since there is no market for pelts, the seal will fall thru the ice and all the creatures (lobsters, crabs) will feed on them and have a healthy population. It would be pay-back for the fish and the fishermen. Our tourism industry is suffering, so lets get hunters here and hunt them. I know it sounds far-fetched, but if you build it, people will come.
