AR-News: (US DC) Activists Decry Growth Of Canadian Seal Hunt

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

washingtonpost.com
High Quota, 'Cruelty' and Lax Oversight Cited 
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page A18 
CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island -- The film image shows a hulking seal 
hunter walking across the ice in pursuit of a baby seal as it wobbles to escape. 
The hunter stomps on the seal's tail, raises his hakapik -- a spiked club -- 
and bangs the baby seal on the head, once, twice, until the animal lies still. 
The hunter turns the club, hooks the seal's silvery head and drags it away, 
leaving a line of bright red blood in the snow. 




The camera cuts to a seal appearing to gasp for air, blood running from its 
nose as it lies on an ice floe. Not far away, a sealer sharpens his knife 
blade. The seal seems to be thrashing as its fur is sliced from its torso. Behind 
it, a pile of carcasses rises, bloodied seals without their fur, black eyes 
like marbles without lids, left behind in the Atlantic sun. 
"This hunt is back, and bigger and crueler than ever," said Rebecca Aldworth, 
a spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which filmed the 
seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in March. She said the images are proof 
that this year's seal hunt in Canada was the most brutal the world has seen 
in three decades. 
"I witnessed the terrible cruelty and almost no government monitoring for the 
hunt," Aldworth said in an interview. "Just meters from me, seals were sliced 
open as they struggled, showing signs of conscious response to pain. I 
noticed several seals still alive. They were breathing and flippers still moving. An 
injured seal lifted her head and cried at us. Blood was coming from her mouth 
and nose, and she was making horrible sounds. She was trying to crawl, 
clearly in agony." 

full story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20625-2004Apr17.html 

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