Why harp seals are hunted

The International Fund for Animal Welfare IFAW has led a campaign to end the commercial slaughter of seals since , shining a global spotlight on the cruel, unnecessary and unsustainable hunt.

While the scale of the hunt has vastly reduced in recent years, IFAW continues to work towards a complete end to the hunt on animal welfare grounds.

The seals are killed primarily for their pelts, for use in the fur and oil industries. They are struck using a traditional club called a hakapik, or shot from boats. The hunt opens against the backdrop of a hugely declining global demand for seal products, international outcry at its cruelty, a late COVID surge in the region of Newfoundland where most of the hunt takes place, and poor ice conditions for ice-breeding seals leading to increased pup mortality. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

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Email Address There was an error, please provide a valid email address. The actual number of harp seals killed by the hunt each year is believed to be much higher than the official figures due to seals "struck and lost", as well as those not reported and those illegally killed. A recent report indicated that an extra percent should be added to the official figures in order to obtain the true extent of the kill, and it has recently been shown that unrecorded losses resulted in the actual number of seals killed in the Canadian hunt exceeding the quotas by up to , seals each year from Taking into account this unrecorded killing as well as the killing of harp seals in the unregulated open-water hunt in Greenland, along with mortality caused by fisheries bycatch, it has been estimated that a total of around , harp seals in the northwest Atlantic population were killed each year from These figures exceed the current replacement yields of the population and there is therefore concern that the population is declining as a result.

Population models considered by a meeting of the Canadian National Marine Mammal Review Committee in April calculated that the harp seal population would decline if hunting were to continue at the current level and age structure. Photo: International Fund for Animal Welfare The killing of "whitecoats" pups younger than weeks for their fur was a major part of the Canadian and East and West Ice hunts. In however the European Economic Community, in response to public opinion, instituted a ban on the import of whitecoat products, a move that resulted in a drop in the number of seals killed.

The hunting of whitecoats in Canada for commercial purposes has now been banned since , but is still permitted for personal use. It is thought that the illegal killing of whitecoats may have taken place in when a conservation group reported that up to 20, whitecoats had been killed and illegally sold. Canadian sealers are currently attempting to find and create new markets for harp seal products, both in Canada and internationally, and to persuade the United States and the European Union to lift trade barriers preventing the import of seal products.

Harp seal oil is being actively marketed, while male harp seal genitals are being exported to the Asian aphrodisiac market. There is also a steady production of seal leather, fur and meat products. In addition, an economic analysis of the harp and hooded seal hunt concluded that if subsidies were eliminated, and the trade in seal penises for aphrodisiacs were discounted, then the net value of the hunt to Canada as a whole was zero.

The sealing season was the first since without a direct federal government subsidy for seal meat and the industry admitted before the hunt began that there were still over , harp seal pelts stockpiled and unsold from Seal meat that could not be sold was reportedly thrown overboard during the hunt. Animal welfare violations during the hunt have been documented by conservation groups, video evidence showing seals being skinned, cut open and dragged with hooks while still alive, being clubbed with wooden sticks or boat hooks, and being left to suffer injured for long periods before being killed.

Video footage has also shown a Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker squashing seals in its path in its efforts to give the sealers better access to the ice floes. Such video evidence has resulted in successful prosecutions of sealers under the Canadian Criminal Code.

Sealing interests are however calling for photographers, whose presence is already severely restricted and who have been attacked by sealers, to be banned from recording the hunt altogether. Norwegian Hunt Harp seals are subjected to intensive commercial hunting during the spring at both their West and East Ice breeding grounds, hunt quotas for these populations being jointly managed by Norway and Russia.

For the sealing season Norwegian vessels were allocated hunt quotas of 15, adult harp seals on the West Ice 2 non-suckling pups deemed equal to 1 adult and 5, adult harp seals on the East Ice 2. An average of 14, harp seals were killed by Norway between and The totals dropped however to 7, and 2, in and respectively. The season saw a further reduction in the number of seals killed to pups and 1, older seals, only two vessels taking part in the West Ice hunt and, for the first time in many years, no Norwegian vessels sealing on the East Ice.

However the season saw a massive increase, a total of 18, seals being killed, of which 12, were on the West Ice 6, non-suckling pups and 5, older seals , and 6, on the East Ice 2, non-suckling pups and 4, older seals. A report produced on Norwegian sealing at the East Ice in criticised various aspects of the hunt, including the details of the regulation forbidding the killing of suckling pups.

This regulation specifies a cut-off date after which all pups are deemed to have finished suckling, whereas many new born seals were actually observed suckling after the cut-off date and could therefore be legally killed under the regulation.

The current method of shooting seals from a boat and then using a hakapik afterwards was also criticised as this resulted in some seals being shot and wounded, either escaping into the water or lying on the ice for several minutes before they could finally be killed by the hakapik.

The Norwegian sealing industry is not economically viable and is dependent on government subsidy, 17 million Norwegian Kroner having been set aside for the season. It was reported in early that the Norwegian sealing industry was in difficulty with fewer crew members having experience in sealing and vessels being in poor condition. Sealing and fisheries interests in the country are however attempting to reinvigorate the hunt. In February the Norwegian parliament asked the Minister of Fisheries to increase the seal quotas for harp and hooded seals significantly and to work to increase the international market for seal products.

Pelts are the main product produced by the harp seal hunt, the market for seal meat being very small and localised in Tromso. Russian Hunt The main product of the government-subsidised Russian harp seal pup hunt, which takes place in the spring at the East Ice, is white fur pelts which are dyed black for sale as hats for which there is little demand.

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