Another Grey Seal Slaughter Set for Hay Island

[Omaha Steve]

Don't confuse this with the attention getting Harp Seal hunt that is about to start. See the LBN story (now in editorials) on seals posted a few moments ago.

http://www.hsicanada.ca/wildlife/seals/seal_hunt_2010/grey_seals_2810.html

February 8, 2010

by Rebecca Aldworth

Too soon, the misery of Canada’s commercial seal slaughter is starting again. Right now, I am preparing to leave for Nova Scotia, along with the HSI ProtectSeals team, to document the killing of up to 2,220 baby grey seals on Hay Island, off Cape Breton.

Hay Island is part of the Scaterie Island Wilderness Area—a protected provincial nature reserve. Yet the Nova Scotia government, in collusion with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is allowing commercial fishermen to go into this supposedly protected space, to beat baby seals to death for their fur. The slaughter opened today, and sealers are indicating they may begin killing the pups as early as Wednesday.


Babies will be clubbed, inches from their mothers. © Paul Turner/HSI


Over the past two years, I have been on Hay Island to observe the seal nursery—and to bear witness to the slaughter of these defenseless creatures. I know that as I write this, the pups born on Hay Island are playing and sleeping, and some of the youngest are likely still nursing from their mothers. The only sounds on the island now are the soft trills of the baby seals and the waves lapping onto the beach. The pups lie across the island, and from the beaches, you can see the ocean stretching into infinity. To think that in a few days time, sealers will descend on this peaceful place and turn it into an open air slaughterhouse, is unbearable.


The peaceful scene will soon be shattered. © Paul Turner/HSI

There are times when I can only stand back in amazement at the shortsightedness of the commercial sealing industry and my government. With the Olympics opening on February 12th, the eyes of the world are on Canada. Terrified baby seals crying as they are bludgeoned to death with wooden bats… newborn seals covered in blood… dying seals cut open with box cutters inches away from each other—these are not the images I believe Canadians want the world to have of our country.

But according to my government and the sealers, the slaughter will go on.

This will be my twelfth year observing and filming commercial seal slaughters in Canada. The sheer brutality of the killing I’ve seen on Hay Island has been among the worst things I have ever witnessed. We are in the fight of our lives for the lives of these seals. And we will not stop—not for a second—until we have won.

Rebecca Aldworth is executive director of HSI Canada.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. I first read that as 'a gay seal slaughter'

:rofl: