Seals, whales, fish - what’s next?

I’ve been reading a lot today about commercial whaling and sanctioned seal hunts. Here’s what I’ve found:

Canada says they have to kill seals because they’re eating all the fish. So they have to bludgeon them to death - or they might use a high powered rifle - so that there are enough fish for people to eat. They say this is the best way. They say they use all parts of the seal - meat for food, leathers and pelts for clothing and handicrafts, oil for fuel, etc. The sad fact is that there is a demand for these products. Last year, Canada’s seal pelt industry showed it’s biggest profit ever - with the market price of the pelt of a seal rising almost 40%. (source info below)

The Humane Society of the US (HSUS) is waging a huge protest against this practice - asking people to boycott all Canadian seafood imports like crab, lobster and various fish. But as this year’s seal hunt continues this month, coming in under the 270,000 limit of seals slaughtered for man’s profit - the seal market is booming.

Rebecca Aldworth, the HSUS director of Canadian Wildlife Issues, is keeping a blog as she monitors/witnesses the seal hunt going on right now. I have to warn you - the videos are sickening (warning: graphic content). How these practices could be considered the best way to kill seals is ridiculous. These methods are atrocious - no matter how many rationalizations man comes up with.

So back to whales. Iceland resumed commercial fishing of minke and fin whales. When you read their government info (link below) - it reads almost identically to Canada’s seal hunt info. Something along the lines of - and I’m really paraphrasing here, “We look at the numbers world wide and the numbers in our area, and figure out how much we can take and still sustain the species. We kill them the best way we know how - which is nicer than the way a lot of animals are killed (like livestock in slaughterhouses and hunted deer.) We do this so there are enough fish for man, and so man can profit, and so man can survive.”

I realize that I’ve brought up two pretty disparate topics and lumped them together in a pile of disdain. That might not be fair, but I think they are related enough. Both industries exist in an effort to meet man’s needs while making the highest profit. Both industries use horrendous practices and creative, self-serving accounting. And while seal populations are not readily in danger, whale populations are. Maybe not every species, but some of the species that are being hunted (like the fin whale) are declining.

So what’s the choice here? We don’t exist in a vacuum. I choose to boycott Canada’s seafood industry because I am against the bludgeoning of seals. I choose to let my government know that I am against whaling in all forms - whether it’s being done by Alaskan natives or Japanese. I hope that one day my leaders will actually represent my interests. I hope that leaders worldwide will do what’s truly best for OUR planet - not what’s best for the bottom line.

Conservation Resources:

• Protectseals.org
• Greenpeace.org
• The International Whaling Commission (IWC)

Government Information:

• Alaskan whaling quotas
• Iceland’s info on whaling
• Canada’s info on sealing

I promise my next post will be lighthearted ;) All this protesting is exhausting, and those seal videos made me cry.