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SLAUGHTER OF GREY SEALS IN NOVA SCOTIA
There is another slaughter of baby seals on the east coast of Canada each year. This slaughter...happens very quietly, but the nature of the slaughter is the same. Fishermen...descend on recently weaned defenseless seal pups and proceed to shoot and bludgeon them to death. The pups' skin is then ripped from their bodies and oftentimes the carcasses are left to rot...

Polls indicate most Americans and Europeans condemn Canada's harp seal hunt, with many prepared to boycott Canadian seafood until it ends. The unwarranted slaughter of grey seals further disgraces Canada and its treatment of marine wildlife.

Nova Scotia fishermen annually destroy grey seal pups by the thousands.
During the ambush on nursery grounds, thick-sculled pups are clubbed with wooden bats.

Even though the European Commission is evaluating a seal products ban for the entire European Union. A scientific review from the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) revealed critical flaws in Canada's Marine Mammal Regulations. Kill tactics for both grey and harp seal hunts are denounced in EFSA's "Animal Welfare Aspects of the Killing and Skinning of Seals."

Despite the European Commission's call for a prohibition on seal goods from countries that engage in inhumane slaughter -- Minister Chisholm wants to inflate the yearly grey-seal quota and broaden the commercial hunt. Minister Chisholm concedes there is no conclusive evidence linking grey seals to diminishing fish stock.

DFO scientists have no decisive proof that culling seals will help cod recovery. In fact, cod represents 2% of the seals' intake and they actually consume other species that prey on cod.

Sable Island is safeguarded as the world’s largest grey seal breeding colony. Public wilderness areas do not belong to a small number of fishermen intent on killing seals they say eat "their" fish.

Canada's grey seal hunt (like its harp seal hunt) lacks ecological, financial or ethical justification. I encourage authorities to terminate the slaughter of grey seals in Nova Scotia.

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Harpseals.org and Voice for Seals team up Efforts toward Ending Canada's Cruel Seal Hunt.

Please continue to spread the word for the baby seals. We are not part time animal lovers and activists. We cannot ignore atrocities like these when news suggests that it's over. It's up to us to keep this issue in the forefront of the news by continuing to send letters to editors, participating in educational demonstrations at grocery stores and restaurants or attending local events such as World Fest & Earth Day, etc., or signing up to participate as ambassadors for the baby seals through Harpseals.org., or circulating the petitions etc. Keep visiting our Billboard for more ways you can help.

Harpseals.org and Voice for Seals team up efforts toward ending Canada's cruel seal hunt. This joining serves as an example of the true spirit behind all those who continue to campaign on behalf of animal welfare and toward ending animal cruelty. Let's make a difference together!

Harpseals.org is in need of a Secretary. Position is Pro Bono. Applicant should reside in the U.S. Contact Harpseals.org for further information about this and other positions available.

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
May 27, 2008
Weeks after the controversial listing

of polar bears as threatened species, new research graphically demonstrates how changes to polar ice can devastate local animals.

The findings of a grim new study illustrate the direct, and often immediate, effects that climate change can have on the physiology, behavior and survival of wild species.

An Iceberg the Size of Rhode Island

In 1998, ecologist and evolutionary biologist Terrie Williams of the University of California at Santa Cruz and her team began a study on Weddell seals in Antarctica.

Three years later, an enormous iceberg detached near Antarctica's McMurdo Sound. According to Williams and her colleagues, the event was caused by global warming, which has likely been melting and weakening ice at the poles.

The 4,200-square-mile iceberg -- dubbed B-15 -- drifted westward and lodged on nearby Ross Island. The lives of countless animals would soon forever change.

Seals Struggle for Breathing Room

"Our first clue that there was a problem was that the seals were not returning to their usual pupping areas, and that there were fewer seals even later in the season," Williams told Discovery News.

She and her colleagues noticed that the ice around Ross Island did not experience its usual "break-out" that year. Normally the ice thaws, creating thinner areas where diving seals can carve breathing holes in the ice shelf. Instead, the presence of B-15 thickened the surrounding ice.

"We started out with three feet of ice and were up to a nine feet thickness" by 2002, the last year of the study, Williams said.

Filming both above and below the thickened ice, Williams and her colleagues observed seals lining up to breathe at the few holes they were able to make with their front canine teeth. Lacking the energy to swim further, fights ensued in the lines, with animals lashing out at each other for access to air.

Williams explained that after B-15 dislodged, there were 80 miles of ice between McMurdo and the open ocean.

"Weddell seals can only swim four miles under ice before they have to come up to breathe, so you can see the problem," she said.

Physiological Systems Overtaxed

The researchers measured the oxygen consumption of seals that managed to surface, and by analyzing the underwater video, calculated the energy cost of each stroke the seals made during dives.

After comparing these calculations with prior data on seals diving under normal conditions, the researchers found that the new environment simultaneously increased the seals' need for oxygen and reduced their access to air.

Since seals dive to hunt, most were unable to catch enough prey to sustain themselves and their pups.

The findings were recently presented at the Experimental Biology 2008 symposium in San Diego.

"Perhaps the most difficult (to observe) were the abandoned pups. The first rule as a biologist is to let nature take its course -- but is this truly nature when global warming due to human perturbation has instigated the event?" Williams said. "It was exceptionally difficult to walk away from crying pups, knowing that the ice conditions likely cause their mothers to leave."

An Even Longer March for Penguins

Seals weren't the only victims of the B-15 break-off. As fans of the popular film "March of the Penguins" know, the flightless birds must travel long distances to feed at sea before returning to their chicks.

After the drifting iceberg thickened the ice surrounding Ross Island, the researchers observed Adelie penguins struggling to complete a trek that is arduous even under normal conditions.

"With the ice edge so far away it was an impossible travel [a long] distance, so many made a one-way trip and abandoned their nests," Williams said, adding that other biologists in the region reported that many of the nests "failed."

Other Affected Animals

Hannah Carey, past president of the American Physiological Society and a professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, told Discovery News that the new research is "compelling" and "may represent one of the best links we have between climate change and the physiology of individual animals, particularly for Antarctic vertebrates."

She said evidence has been mounting that climate-related effects have been disrupting hibernating animals, fish populations, amphibians and other groups, but little work has been done on the physiological impacts to individual animals, and the implications these have for survival of adults and their young.

Carey also said the new research demonstrates how a warming event at the poles can actually lead to ice thickening in other regions, illustrating how "climate change [impacts] on animals can be less predictable and more variable than we may have thought."

James Hicks, professor of comparative and evolutionary physiology at the University of California at Irvine, echoed Carey's comments.

"In a period where global climate change is occurring, scientific studies that investigate the interactions of physiology, behavior, ecology and the physical environment are needed now more than ever," he said. "These types of studies will help us predict how environmental changes may influence animal populations and contribute to our making informed decisions about conservation efforts."

In Human Hands

Both Hicks and Williams hope greater emphasis will be placed on animal physiology studies in the future, as a means of understanding how global environmental challenges can impact animals, including humans.

Williams, however, said the best preventive action "is to get people to recognize the domino effect of human impacts."

"Who could have imagined that driving a car in the U.S. could result in a Weddell seal pup freezing to death in the Antarctic?" she said. "But it did."

Russian Seal Farms for Fur

There are thousands of seals raised in farms, like this, in Arkangelsk Oblast, in the Northwest territory of Russia. They call them “farms” but they are more like concentration camps.

A small white seal skin in good condition costs around $ 7000 USD which is why the brutal killers try by all means to avoid damaging the fur regardless of cruelty issues. One method is a shot in the head where death is instantaneous but the skin is left with the hole of the projectile. The other method is more brutal and consists of beating the animal with a stick of wood, the hakapik, leaving the skin intact.Over 90% of seals killed by this process are only a few weeks or even days old.

Canada, under enormous international pressure, argues that this practice is prohibited for commercial purposes and they only grant licences to individuals to reach an annual quota of one quarter of a million. The only country that still allows this cruel "farming" activity is primitive Russia.

The baby seals are transported beyond the mountain and when they reach one month of age are brutally killed.

This type of activity is immoral starting with consumers of animal skins and including the exorbitant prices and profits earned by traders and middlemen. While the prices of a simple skin beyond the thousands of dollars, the average wage of those who do the dirty work and mancham the hands of blood around $ 150 per month which to them is a lot of money. The killing continues as long as people buy the fur.

Ask California Legislators to Protect San Diego Seals

When California deeded Casa beach to the City of San Diego in 1931, it listed a number of permissible uses for the beach, including swimming. Because the city's interpretation of the deed puts recreation before conservation, swimmers and sunbathers who want Casa Beach all to themselves have harassed harbor seals at the beach. Some seals have suffered injury and death as a result. The State Legislature could at any time change the terms of the trust to explicitly require the City to protect the seals. Please Take Action to ask your state legislators to sponsor legislation that would change the terms of the 1931 state tidelands grant to protect the seals.

Californian's: Send an automated email! http://ga0.org/campaign/sdseals

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