Some people promote baby seals clubbing with uncertain arguments, what do you think?

Question

Some people promote baby seals clubbing with uncertain arguments, what do you think?

Answer 1

As long as there is a want for fur, clubbing will go on in the name of fashion.  There is no moral way to promote this unless, it was done out of real need like an eskimo needing to eat and keep warm for the winter.  This is a bunch of hardcore maniacs looking to make a buck.  Their need is greed.

Answer 2

Well, if you shoot them, you put holes in the skin.  Who wants to wear jackets with holes in them?  This is why they're clubbed.  But the clubbing is done humanely.

Answer 3

Well when you think about it, if someone were going to kill my child, and then skin him/her, it would be better if they had been clubbed unconsious.  However, I think bamboo shoots under the fingernails would be a good start on the guys that do this kind of outrageous behavior!

Why wants to club unwitting babies to death!  c**p, pick on someone or somthing your own size!

Answer 4

Just like any other idea being promoted, they should firm up their arguments beforehand.  Of course, these same arguments may only seem "uncertain" (whatever that means) to you because you don't understand them.  Perhaps you should  examine why you think they are "uncertain" and maybe define just what an "uncertain argument" is.

Answer 5

What do you mean by "uncertain arguments?"

Are you saying some might justify the action of clubbing to make a living at selling the fur?

Answer 6

I, too, am unclear about the exact nature of your question.  Do you mean they are not certain about their arguments, or that, regardless of their arguments, you would consider them invalid?

My husband was born and raised in rural NF.  He has considered it his duty, as well as interest, to look into this problem in some detail.  



Traditionally, when Europeans found a seal enclave, they showed up when the young are about 3 months old and bash the living h**l out of them.  They sometimes left a few men there to club as many as they can, rend the products, and return to pick them and their grisly cargo up in a year or more.  In about 10 years, nearly every whelping patch was extinct.  The ONLY reason that this did NOT happen in the NF and Labrador areas is that they rest and whelp on ice flows, rather than land.  It is an extremely hazardous job, with many men being lost, and the primitive equipment they had just couldn't kill all the seals.  They couldn't even get to the pups.  Until modern times, however.  There was never any quota in those days, and no gov't intervention of any kind.  They used large off shore boats to transport their crews to the pups on the flows, and brought machine guns, snowmobiles, all the modern conveniences.   By the 60's, all these tech advances were being utilized to ensure the same fate to these seals that had been meted out everywhere else.  And they had almost managed it, too.  Until someone went out with a camera, and caught it all on tape.  The world outrage caused a massive backlash against the seal slaughter, which it was, don't kid yourselves, and the gov't tried to minimize it with the 'seals eat fish' stats, and other propaganda.  No one was buying, and the federal gov't finally imposed a moratorium.  They banned the large boats that could get out to the pups, and only allowed the small operators to get at the adults after about a decade, with specifics on which species of seal could be taken.  It may have been the ONLY thing that saved the seals.  



With the moratorium now on fish, and the gov't looking for other resources of NF and Labrador to exploit, the feds have re-introduced the seal kill.  With a quota based on 'scientific evidence', which is total bullocks, as they have no real clue about seal populations, what fish they eat, or much else about their lives, and an insistence on 'humane methods', they can cheerfully say they are 'job creating' with a clear conscience.  They are even developing new products to increase the demand.



Now this is not to say that this is not a valid industry, anymore than ranching animals for market, or other forms of animal use.  I don't eat meat ever, and I try not to purchase any products with an animal component in them, which isn't easy, but anyone who does cannot actually object to seal killing.  It's no different.  Conventional commercially raised cows, pigs, and chickens are just as helpless and treated just as inhumanly as seals.  I personally think we should fight all such revolting practices.  We are diminished as a ppl and a society by such horrors perpetuated in our name.  I didn't hear the same hue and cry over the senseless slaughter of wolves in Alberta, or the issuing of hunting licenses for the endangered Grizzly...  Again, is it because they are not helpless cute baby seals?  A wolf still can't put up much of a fight when tagged from a helicopter and dragged down by ground troops.  But maybe it takes the curse off it when the animal could rip your face off in a tent at night.  In theory, anyway...    



However, Newfoundland and Labrador ppls of European descent have colonized this area for hundreds of years and now have a legitimate heritage and claim to the seal hunt.  As one filmmaker says"Sealing is one of the activities that has kept Newfoundland outports going over the generations, and members of my own extended family have relied on the hunt.

  

I remember years ago when the International Fund for Animal Welfare first launched its campaign against the hunt and Brigitte Bardot came to Newfoundland. I knew many of the people that were being demonized - they were my uncles and my cousins - good people - so it hurt to see them portrayed in such an unfair and skewed manner.

As the years have passed, I have observed the debate and taken an interest in the underlying issues. With this film, I try to tell their side of the story. But I want the film to be more than a defensive reaction to the anti-hunt forces. I want it to contribute in a reflective and meaningful way to the debate on the hunt, and to talk about the complex relationship between culture and environment....

Hunting and slaughter of animals has taken place since the beginning of human history, so it’s important to understand the context in which the hunting is taking place. In the case of outport Newfoundland, people hunt to put food on the table - to feed themselves and their families."  http://www.sealsandsealing.net/sealers/C...  

Two of the books we have in our personal library on this subject are "The War against the Seals:  A History of the North American Seal Fishery" by Briton Cooper Busch, and "Of Men and Seals:  A History of the Newfoundland Seal Hunt", by James E. Candow.  Produced from a federal grant, the last is a federal chronology up to 1988.



From the 'Net:



"There is no aboriginal sealing in Newfoundland. There is in Labrador of course. Aboriginal sealing has never been a major concern...

Less than 1 percent of the harp seals killed last year were taken by aboriginal people. Canada's commercial seal slaughter is not an indigenous hunt, though the industry strategically attempts to hide it behind a veil of native rights. In reality, none of the groups opposing the commercial seal hunt take issue with native subsistence hunting. We are trying to end an industrial scale slaughter of seal pups for their fur that is conducted by non-native people from Canada's east coast."



"Only 3% of a harp's seals diet is made up from Cod. There is a very complex food chain in the ocean and this diversity and interdependence has worked very well throughout time. The cod was not destroyed by the harp seals. The species was depleted by human fisheries.

At the time of Jacques Cartier, there was no shortage of fish and there were ten times as many seals. The fact is that the largest predator of cod aside from people are other species of fish, the very fish that harp seals prey upon. When you lower harp seal populations you increase predatory fish populations thereby contributing to a further decline in the cod. Rather than more seals less cod, it is more seals = more cod and less seals = less cod..."

You should also have a quick look at this simplified depiction of the food web of the northwest Atlantic www.ifaw.org/ifaw/dfiles/file_54.jpg - as you can see, determining what the impact of a seal cull on any one fish population would be next to impossible.

And even the Department of Fisheries and Oceans agrees: "Seals eat cod, but seals also eat other fish that prey on cod. There are several factors contributing to the lack of recovery of Atlantic cod stocks such as fishing effort, the poor physical condition of the fish, poor growth, unfavourable ocean conditions and low stock productivity at current levels…It is widely accepted in the scientific community that there are many uncertainties in the estimates of the amount of fish consumed by seals. Seals and cod exist in a complex ecosystem, which mitigates against easy analysis or simple solutions to problems such as the lack of recovery of cod stocks."

Answer 7

someone should club THEIR kids.