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Artykuł "Ho-hum hunt print this article. Seal industry ailing, though China offers a sliver of hope" zaczyna się obiecująco:

After 35 years of fishing out of Carmanville harbour, Larry Easton decided to skip last year's seal hunt for first time in 10 years. And his chances of going back to it this year look slim. Easton traditionally hunted seal, and fished for crab and caplin. In the past, the seal hunt offered an opportunity to make decent money from a week's work.

Dalej w artykule o ekonomii tej rzezi i nadziei pałkarzy, jaką daje planowana współpraca z Chinami (piszemy o tym także na stronie z danymi związanymi z polowaniami).

If there is to be a future for the industry, Easton said it may lie in new markets like China. In January, federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea went there to promote seal. China is Canada's second-largest trading partner and the world's largest consumer of seafood.

"If we could get (China) onside, no doubt it would be a plus for the industry," said Easton

Całość na tej stronie.

Canada's seal hunt to close early after low harvest

April 15, 2010

A lack of sea ice in one of the warmest Canadian winters on record and a European boycott have ruined what was to be a banner seal hunt off Canada's Atlantic coast this month, according to officials and sealers.

Canada's Fisheries Minister Gail Shea last month increased by 50,000 the allowable catch of harp seals this season to 330,000, in defiance of a ban on seal products by the European Union.

But most of Canada's 6,000 sealers stayed home, unable to find buyers for their catch or stymied by a lack of ice floes for the first time in 60 years on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which usually host hordes of seals birthing pups.

"The European boycott was devastating to the industry this year, as was the lack of ice on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence due to an exceptionally warm winter," Jean Richard, Canadian fisheries department conservation chief for the Quebec coastal region, told AFP.

"The hunt, as a result of reduced market demand, has been scaled back substantially," added Larry Yetman, fisheries resource management officer for the Newfoundland and Labrador coastal region.

Fewer than 50 sealing ships launched from Newfoundland ports, down from 500 in past years. Others would have eagerly set out to reap this year's higher pelt prices -- at 21 US dollars, nearly double last year's prices.

But there was now only one local buyer, NuTan Furs, which said upfront it would buy less than 15,000 pelts from a dedicated group of sealers this year.

"Every sealer in Newfoundland would have considered going out on the ice for that price, but there aren't any buyers," Yetman said.

He lamented that sealing conditions were otherwise ripe for a bountiful harvest along the Labrador coast: "The ice is close to shore, not heavy, and easily penetrated by sealing vessels."

"Unfortunately, we expect market demand to be satisfied in a couple of days, and then we would talk about closing the hunt," likely after less than 15 percent of the quota has been reached, he said.

To the south, a solitary ship set off with 10 crew onboard last week from the Magdalen Islands, where former Beatle Paul McCartney led a seal hunt protest in 2006, in search of prey for Quebec eateries.

The rest of the island's fleet remained docked, each ship too small to venture far beyond the Saint Lawrence seaway.

Denis Longuepee, president of the Magdalen Islands seal hunters association, said the steel-hulled 65-foot vessel Jean-Mathieu had already returned from Labrador coastal waters after nine days, with 2,200 seal carcasses.

Rejean Vigneau, a sealer and owner of a Magdalen Island butcher shop that specializes in seal meat, said their harvest was disappointing -- half of what he had hoped for.

"Normally, we never go hunting for seal meat," he commented. "We hunt for pelts and also bring back the meat. But there's no market for seal pelts this year."

Except for NuTan, all of Canada's seasonal seal processing companies have been shuttered, forcing the Jean-Mathieu crew to "throw pelts back in the water."

"It's a disaster, really unthinkable," Vigneau said. "It's the first time ever that this has happened."

Longuepee told AFP that there remained "a lot of demand for seal meat" as a delicacy, triple what it was last year and growing, but fisheries officials insist the market for the meat is still relatively small.

To try to boost demand, Canada's Fur Institute is expected to soon launch a seal cookbook originally published by the European Union, ironically three years before EU states voted in 2009 to ban the marketing of seal products from 2010 onwards.

In Ottawa, efforts are now underway to try to open up new markets for seal pelts in Asia while the EU ban -- called for by animal rights groups -- is being challenged at the World Trade Organization.

Z bloga PETA z 15 czerwca:

Good news: Canada's annual commercial seal slaughter ended last night—and more than 80 percent of the seals who had been marked for death were spared this year.

Ze stron IFAW:

The commercial slaughter of harp seal pups for 2010 officially closed at 8 pm on June 14.

Only 66,509 harp seal pups have been reported killed this year, much lower than the total allowable catch of 330,000 harp seals set by Fisheries Minister Gail Shea. This is the second year in a row that the number of seals killed has been drastically below the allowable catch. Last year, some 72,000 seals were killed.

The continued lack of consumer desire to purchase products made from Canada’s dead seals means that over 260,000 seal pups have been spared a cruel and unnecessary death this year. Unfortunately, due to the absence of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence breeding grounds, hundreds of thousands of pups may have perished - even with the reduced commercial hunt.

There is no better time for the Canadian government to bring an end to this unnecessary slaughter and begin helping sealers transition into other industries. Results of a new poll conducted by Environics Research Group for IFAW indicates that 79% of Canadians would approve of the use of tax dollars being used to phase out the seal hunt and transition sealers into other industries.

Yesterday in the Canadian Senate, Senator Mac Harb criticized the Canadian government for failing Canadians by continuing to support the commercial seal hunt rather than work to provide alternatives. Canada is not the only country where sealing is in decline. Recent media from Norway reports that despite increased subsidies to the industry, only one sealing vessel took part in the hunt this year, and that this boat now also intends to stop sealing. (...)

gzyra napisał(a):Yesterday in the Canadian Senate, Senator Mac Harb criticized the Canadian government for failing Canadians by continuing to support the commercial seal hunt rather than work to provide alternatives.

Warto przeczytać przemowę MacHarba, ciekawsze:

When the government should have been rolling up its sleeves, sitting at the table with stakeholders and charting a course for a more viable future, it chose, instead, to pursue pointless and even damaging actions, such as passing unanimous motions in the other place to force Canadian athletes to wear seal fur at the Vancouver Olympics.
...
Government officials attended a one-time seal snack photo op in the parliamentary restaurant. It wasted taxpayers' money on commissioning studies into a possible $35 million slaughter and incineration of up to 220,000 Sable Island grey seals. It wasted millions of dollars on political and bureaucratic missions to Europe to defend a doomed market. It participated in fashion shows in China in the hope of selling the Chinese more than seal penises.
...
The European Union is Canada's second-largest trading partner. The government is currently negotiating an historic free trade pact that could bring a potential 20 per cent boost to bilateral trade and a GDP gain of up to $12 billion for Canada by 2014. However, the government's support for the commercial seal hunt is getting in the way of the deal. Let us do the math. The seal hunt brought in less than $1 million last year. What part of $12 billion does this government not understand?
...
In order to justify its ill-advised measure and its wasting of even more public money, the government is trying to convince us that it can remove the American ban by disputing it before the WTO. And Canadian taxpayers will have to foot the bill of over $10 million [porównajmy z $1 milionem "zarobku" za ostatni rok - AZ] for this futile dispute, even though the European Union has every right to ban such products if it so chooses.
...
Why are we wasting scarce resources lobbying foreign markets, when the majority of the people around the world have sent a clear message that the hunt is an unviable activity? [cieszy że byliśmy jednymi z nadawców tego "jasnego przekazu" - AZ]
...
In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the lone boat that went seal hunting only found a buyer for the meat and was forced to throw 2,200 pelts into the sea.
...
When asked about the commercial seal hunt, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said: "since I have been at Fisheries and Oceans, this file has been first and foremost on my desk and has probably taken more of my time than any other file we have dealt with" [wciąż nie rozumiem czemu oni się tak uparcie trzymają tych polowań, czemu one mają takie priorytet? - AZ]
...

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Prawie 400 tys. fok zginie w 2010 roku?

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Re: Prawie 400 tys. fok zginie w 2010 roku?

Re: Prawie 400 tys. fok zginie w 2010 roku?

Re: Prawie 400 tys. fok zginie w 2010 roku?