Motorcade protests East Coast seal hunt

Full story: http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=51&cat=23&id=676435&more

Jun 24 2006

Imagine 325,000 dead and skinned seals lining the Island Highway from Victoria past Campbell River.

That’s the image organizers of the Funeral Motorcade for the Seals would like to to grasp as they travel the distance in protest of Canada’s East Coast seal hunt.

The motorcade leaves Victoria on July 2 at 10:15 a.m., stopping in Duncan, Ladysmith, Nanaimo (12:15 to 12:50 p.m.), Parksville, Qualicum, Courtenay, Comox and Campbell River, raising awareness of the annual hunt on the ice flows off Newfoundland and Labrador.

“We usually set the number of kilometres by the quota of seals which is set by the government,” said Anthony Marr of Heal Our Planet Earth.

Marr said seven or eight vehicles will be leaving Victoria, with others joining along the way, and he expects up to 15 when the motorcade reaches full strength.

seal study, but when they are "too" protected, seals do pose as a nuisance. They have a significant effect on fish... and since we overfish their food source... we must eliminate them as well. Its a round and round debate that will never end. Who and what needs to survive over who and what.

Its similar to deer becoming a nuisance because there are no large natural predators. Same with the seals.. there are no longer natural predators for the seals---we eliminated many whale species 200yrs ago. It may seem wrong... but its the same reason the allow open season on game... and where I lived hunters used and ate what they shot.

Seals have predators, though orcinus Orca eats them thier main predators are sharks. Additionally harp seal numbers are limited by thier need to reproduce on ice sheets, only those who find room to birth and rear thier young reproduce, when kept in the ocean by overcrowding or lack of sea ice they spontaneously abort. As a result seal populations, which are nowhere near historic highs and already threatened by pollution, global warming and bad ice conditions, are naturally regulated.

Science has also found that cod (the overfished animal in question) comprises only 1.5% of the harp seal's diet. The seals eat much more of the predatory fishes which eat juvenile cod, so the argument has been made that killing seals actually increases cod predation. Also, the decomposition of so many seal bodies (once the juvenile seals are skinned thier bodies are left on the ice and eventually wind up on the ocean floor) contributes to bacterial overgrowth and anoxic conditions, which are a major cause of dead zones and fish kills.

I was wearing my club sandwiches not seals shirt. Everybody loved it. Captive audience.




Buy a shirt to help promote saving seals. http://www.shirtsforseals.com/home/

Beating a seal with a club to the head is very different than say lining them up at a slaughter house and administering an electric shock to the head. There are way to many cases of illegal skinning of seals while still alive and feeling pain captured on video to ignore.

One of the few times I will ever quote a member of the President (his daughter) Reagan family.

"If most of us rounded a corner on a highway and saw a slaughter like this, we would call the police, we would scream until our throats gave out, we would probably charge the men with clubs. We wouldn’t say, “I’d do something, but there are so many other problems in the world …” Patti Davis, Newsweek, 4/6/05


Seal killer and "national hero" Nikolai Hemmingsen brutally hooks a baby harp seal.
Archive Photo: Sea Shepherd

http://www.harpseals.org/hunt/index.html