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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2008

Will seizing Sea Shepherd ship help Canada to hold off European seal product import ban?

 

TOKYO; SYDNEY, N.S.-The Institute of Cetacean Research acknowledged on April 14, 2008 that pursuit of the Japanese whaling fleet by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel Steve Irwin had held their winter "research whaling" catch to just 551 minke whales, 55% of their self-assigned quota of 985 minke whales and 50 fin whales.

"We did not have enough time for research because we had to avoid sabotage," said a prepared statement from the Japan Fisheries Agency.

The statement affirmed claims issued by Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson almost a month earlier. Watson in web postings enjoyed the whaling industry concession, but in the wake of one of the Sea Shepherds' most dramatic successes in 30 years of whale-saving, the 2008 Sea Shepherd anti-sealing campaign was all but stifled.

Acting on orders from Canadian fisheries minister Loyola Hearn, "a black-clad Royal Canadian Mounted Police squad brandishing submachine-guns" stormed the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat on April 12, recounted Keith Doucette of Canadian Press. The 17 crew members were jailed overnight in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The Farley Mowat was towed to Sydney.

Captain Alex Cornelissen, a Dutch citizen, and first officer Peter Hammarstedt, of Sweden, were charged with approaching within 900 meters of sealers on the ice without an observer's permit. Both were deported to their home nations, but were required to return to Nova Scotia for trial on May 1.

"Hearn said the Farley Mowat came within nine metres of a group of sealers on March 30, shattering floes as sealers scrambled to get back to their boat. The charges could result in fines of up to $100,000 or up to one year in jail, or both," wrote Doucette.

Multiple time best-selling author Farley Mowat himself, now 86, posted bail of $5,000 each for Cornelissen and Hammarstedt. Watson had planned to join the Farley Mowat crew for part of the Atlantic Canada campaign, but was still in New York City when the ship was seized. On April 24, Watson issued a press release claiming to have "set the conditions for the Canadian government to release the Farley Mowat."

Contended Watson, "At no time did the Farley Mowat, a Dutch registered yacht, ever enter the 12-mile [Canadian] territorial limit. Therefore the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society considers this action to be an act of high seas piracy. The Society will not post ransom or bond on the ship. The Society demands the return of the ship in the condition it was seized; compensation for the loss of the vessel while under seizure; [and] the dropping of charges against the captain and first officer. The Society demands an official apology from Loyola Hearn."

Watson said that he expected Cornelissen and Hammarstedt to be acquitted, and intended to sue the Canadian government for damages, including "punitive damages for high seas piracy."

But with the Farley Mowat tied up in Sydney and Watson far from the ice, the episode and the seal hunt itself dropped out of frequent news coverage. The Canadian government had already largely muzzled the other major institutional sealing opponents, by denying early-season observers' permits to more than 60 applicants, including Humane Society of the U.S. representative Rebecca Aldworth. Aldworth and other HSUS representatives reportedly did reach the ice later, but the seal hunt was no longer a front-page item at the HSUS web site by the mid-April peak of the sealing season.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare offered a brief, distant video clip of a sealer clubbing one seal who escaped despite probable severe injury, then killing another seal, who was dragged aboard a waiting boat. PETA offered a page one link to a site protesting the much smaller Namibian seal hunt, but nothing about the Canadian hunt.

Lacking new visual imagery and information to post, many leading animal advocacy groups had never posted anything about the 2008 hunt at all.

Anti-sealing protest momentum continued in Europe. Demonstrators in many cities on April 25 asked the European Union to ban imports of seal pelts and other products made from seals. Pledged EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas to Reuters on April 12, at a gathering of EU environment ministers in Brdo, Slovenia, "We will propose a ban of seal fur imports if [a nation] can't prove they were obtained in a humane way. I'm very much concerned at the way the hunt is conducted," Dimas said, but added that actually enacting the ban "will take some time."

Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams and Nunavut premier Paul Okalik told Reuters correspondent Chris Morris in St. John's, Newfoundland a few days later that they expected the EU to vote on a ban of imports of seal products in June 2008. Okalik had just returned to Canada after lobbying in Europe against the possible ban. Williams and Okalik said they had asked Ottawa to ban the use of hakapiks, or seal clubs, to improve the image of sealing.

"We need to show that we are genuinely interested in resolving the concerns of people in Europe and around the world," said Williams, who first recommended banning hakapiks in 2006.

Responded Aldworth of HSUS, "Some of the worst examples of cruelty that we filmed this year were sealers shooting at seals, wounding them, and the seals suffering on the ice. Rifles are every bit as inhumane."

Canadian Sealers Association spokesperson Frank Pinhorn objected to CBC News that banning hakapiks would be "like taking a hammer from a carpenter."

An EU seal product import ban as Dimas has outlined it would actually address the Namibian, Norwegian, and Russian seal hunts as well as Canadian sealing, but all of the other seal hunts combined kill a fraction as many seals as the Atlantic Canadian harp seal hunt, which is distinct from the much smaller Native Canadian ringed seal hunt conducted by the Inuit of the far north.

The Atlantic Canadian sealing quota for 2008 was 275,000, up from 270,000 in 2007. About 30% of the Atlantic Canadian quota are killed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This is the relatively accessible and much documented first phase of the hunt. The Gulf of St. Lawrence hunters chiefly use hakapiks.

Because the seals are mostly younger and killed at close range, the rate of retrieval of clubbed seals is believed to be relatively high. About 70% of the Atlantic Canadian quota are killed during the sparsely monitored second phase of the hunt, along the remote Labrador Front. Labrador Front hunters mostly use rifles. They may kill far more seals than the number actually landed and skinned, since wounded seals often manage to reach water before sealers reach them, and those who die in the water tend to sink.

Of all the protest groups who have tried to observe and document the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt, only the Sea Shepherds-- twice--have managed to reach the Labrador Front. Most of the published information about it comes from sealers' own accounts.