harp seal diet
there’s a lot of misinformation out there about the east coast commercial seal hunt. it’s a complex issue, with a lot of competing interests muddying the waters. let’s separate the myths from the facts. a lot of people think that only adult seals are hunted, and that the pups are protected.
harp seal diet, many of us believe that seal meat isn’t wasted, that all of the animal is used… but, in reality, only whitecoat seal pups under two weeks of age are protected. 98% of the seals killed are pups from 3 weeks to 3 months of age. and, after decades of government subsidies and attempts to create a market for it,
92% of seal meat from the commercial harp seal hunt is still wasted - there just isn’t any demand. politicians always told us that seals were eating all the cod, slowing the recovery of the fishery. we were also told that sealing is a big part of a sealers’ annual income, but in reality, cod make up only 1% of the harp seals’ diet. scientists with the department of fisheries and oceans say cod are now recovering in many areas, even where there are large seal populations. sealing is an industry in decline. exports of seal products dropped
from 18 million dollars in 2006 to just 317,000 dollars in 2015. still, there are more uncomfortable truths that politicians and the sealing industry have purposefully tried to hide... like we don’t club seals anymore. or that all seal hunting is the same, whether it's done on the east coast or in the arctic - but that’s just not true: hakapiks, along with clubs and guns, are still used to kill seals in the east coast hunt. seal hunting in the arctic is very different. the meat is shared throughout the community and the entire animal is used.
inuit communities rely on seals as food and for their way of life. 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on trying to revive the commercial seal hunt. it’s time to start investing in alternatives for rural communities in newfoundland, and put an end to the east coast commercial seal hunt once and for all.
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