FAQs: The Atlantic seal hunt
How does the seal hunt benefit Canada?
The economic value of the seal hunt is another one of those things that is open to interpretation. The federal government says the landed value of seals exceeded $16.5 million in 2005, providing a "significant" source of income for thousands of sealers benefiting them and their families at a time when, according to the DFO, "other fishing options are unavailable, or limited at best, in many remote, coastal communities."
Source: 2007 data from Department of Fisheries and Oceans
The DFO says the 2005 seal catch ranked fifth in value of all the species it monitors, after snow crab, shrimp, lobster, and cod.
The DFO also says the 2006 seal catch was one of the most profitable in memory, a combination of a higher allowable catch and a high price for pelts. Since then, however, the total allowable catch has been cut by 100,000 seals and the price for the best pelts has dropped from $105 in 2006 to an expected $15 in 2009.
Still, seal amounts to only a fraction of the $600-million Newfoundland fishery. But for some sealers, it represents up to one-third of their annual income. And in a province with jobless rates north of 15 per cent, they say that means even more.
The DFO and Newfoundland and Labrador estimate that around 5,000 to 6,000 people derive some income from sealing, about one per cent of the provincial population.
The governments argue that's a substantial number for rural communities, and comparable to other industries.
"Although sealing may seem to be a minor industry within the larger economy, many locally-important industries share this characteristic," the DFO website states. "For example, crop production and forestry each account for less than one per cent of Canadian GDP, but their local economic importance is undisputable."
Not so fast, say the anti-sealing groups. The IFAW describes the contribution of sealing to Newfoundland's GDP as "trivial" and says after costs and indirect subsidies are taken into account (patrolling the hunt, upgrading plants, promoting the hunt, developing new markets for seal products and supporting research to find new products), Canadians would "likely find that the hunt actually costs the Canadian taxpayer money."
It's a pointless activity, in the view of the IFAW, which says, "the only economically valuable part of the seal is its fur, a non-essential luxury product that no one really needs."
The DFO flatly denies that it subsidizes the seal hunt. It also denies charges that the seal hunt is not sustainable. It says Canada's seal population is "healthy and abundant" at about 5.6 million animals and triple what it was in the 1970s.
But the IFAW says the hunt has become a "cull, designed more to achieve short-term political objectives than those of a biologically sustainable hunt." For one thing, the group says Canada's management plan fails to account for wide variations in the natural mortality rates among seal pups.
A critique from Greenpeace also said the quotas are "scientifically indefensible" because they don't take into account the actual number of seals killed in the hunt including those that are "struck and lost," or discarded because of pelt damage.
I live near toronto. Here, as in most of the world, when technology and/or changing times make your job obsolete, you are forced to learn a new field. Maybe it's time for the few sealers who get 1/3 of their annual income from the killing to learn something new.
