Thin ice limits Quebec's seal hunt

March 30, 2000
Web posted at: 10:42 p.m. EST (0342 GMT)

In this story: Weather stalls tourists, too Hunt of older seals permitted RELATED STORIES, SITES

CAP-AUX-MEULES, Quebec (CNN) -- Thin ice at the end of an unusually warm winter has resulted in more than a 90 percent drop in the number of seals killed during this region's portion of the annual seal hunt.

Thin ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has made it impossible for hunters to reach many of the young harp seals. In a region where the Canadian government set a quota of 45,000 seals, only 3,000 were taken this season, according to Roger Simon of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Failure of the hunt is an economic blow to struggling communities such as Cap-aux-Meules in the Magdalen Islands, where the hides bring as much as $15 apiece to fishermen at the end of an idle winter. But this year's small take was welcome news to animal protection advocates, who have denounced the hunt as cruel and unnecessary.

The warm weather also cut the number of pilgrimages by animal lovers to see newborn harp seals. On average, about 1,000 tourists visit the Magdalens each spring. This year's attendance was about 300, Simon said.

In Canada, seals are hunted off Newfoundland , Labrador, Iles de la Madeleine, the Quebec North Shore, Cape Breton Island and at aboriginal communities in the North. Sealers and tourists alike depend on firm ice floes to reach the seals. But unusually large patches of open water and slushy ice this year isolated the seals.

Hunt opponents from the International Fund for Animal Welfare say that many of the mammals may have died because the thin ice may have resulted in fewer places for the seals to give birth.

An international outcry against the seal hunt ended the clubbing of the youngest "whitecoat" seals in the 1980s. But hunting is still permitted for the seals a few weeks later in their life cycles, when they have shed their white infant coats.

Ice conditions are normal for a much larger annual hunt scheduled for April 10 on the Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, Simon said. The quota set there and in other areas of eastern Canada exceeds 250,000 harp and hooded seals.

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International Fund for Animal Welfare
Atlantic Seal Hunt - 2000 Management Plan
Quebec Government
Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada

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