Seal hunting
Seal hunting refers to the practice of hunting seals for their fur, food, and body parts, with both personal and commercial dimensions. This activity has a historical context, particularly among Indigenous groups like the Inuit, who have relied on seal hunting for sustenance and cultural practices for thousands of years. The commercial aspect of seal hunting gained prominence in the late 17th century, leading to significant annual kills, particularly of harp seals, which were sought for their fat and fur. Over the years, public awareness of the perceived cruelty associated with seal hunting and concerns about declining seal populations have prompted increased regulation in various countries.
Despite these regulations, which include bans on the importation of seal products in regions like the European Union, seal hunting continues, particularly in Canada, which accounts for the largest portion of the global harvest. The practice has faced strong opposition from animal rights activists who argue against the methods used and the ethical implications of hunting seals, especially newborn pups. Conversely, proponents argue that regulated hunting can play a role in ecosystem management. This complex issue embodies a clash of cultural traditions, economic interests, and animal rights, making it a topic of ongoing debate and differing perspectives.
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Seal hunting
DEFINITION: Personal and commercial hunting of seals for their fur, food, and body parts
Commercial seal hunting involves the wholesale slaughter of the animals in ways many people consider cruel. Public awareness of the practices used in seal hunting and concerns about dwindling seal populations have led to greater regulation of seal hunting, but many environmental rights activists do not believe that such regulation has gone far enough. In contrast, seal hunting is considered part of a traditional way of life for some Indigenous groups.
The Inuit and other Indigenous residents of the northern latitudes have hunted seals for millennia as sources of food and clothing. Commercial seal hunting, or sealing, began in 1689, and by the middle of the eighteenth century some 20,000 seals were being killed annually. The cooking oil refined from adult seal fat was valuable at the time, and sealing produced 500 tons of the fat per year. According to official Canadian records, more than 35 million seals were killed from 1805 to 1936. After World War II ended in 1945 the demand for seal oil declined, but the demand for the animals’ fur increased; this meant that hunters’ emphasis moved from adult seals to newborns, the fur of which was more desirable.
In the 2020s, seal hunting still takes place in a few places around the world, including Greenland and Namibia. The largest—and most controversial—seal harvest comes from Canada, where most of the world’s harp seals live. Animal rights activists have long campaigned against seal hunting, and many jurisdictions have taken steps to reign in the practice. The European Union banned the importation of seal products in 2009, and Russia banned the importation of seal pelts in 2011. However, exceptions have been made for products of Inuit hunts in Canada, which are separate from the general hunt allowed by the Canadian government.
Female harp seals bear one pup annually beginning in late February. When born, the pup, called a whitecoat, has snow-white fur, the color of which begins to change when the pup reaches the age of two weeks. This white fur was fashionable for use in clothing during the 1960s, especially in Germany. Eventually, however, the killing of harp seal pups less than two weeks old became illegal.
Harp seal populations in Canadian waters declined to approximately 1.75 million by 1961, when the regulation of seal hunting began. In 1964, a documentary film about seal hunting caused such an outcry among the public that eventually hunting quotas, seasons, and licensing procedures were established. These regulations had so many loopholes, however, that the harp seal population continued to drop, reaching approximately 1 million by 1975.
In 1972, the United States banned the importation of harp seal pelts, but demand had never been high there. The European Economic Community, where demand had been greater, banned harp seal pelts from its markets in 1983, causing the annual harvest of seals to decline to 60,000. By 1998, the worldwide harp seal population was estimated to be somewhere between 2.6 and 3.8 million. According to the government of Canada, the Northwest Atlantic harp seal population was estimated at 7.4 million in 2022.
Despite these gains in protection for the seals, the annual kill actually increased in the late twentieth century as demand rose in the Far East for the body parts of adult male seals, which were believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and to provide a cure for impotence. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) set the total allowable catch (TAC) of harp seals at 270,000 per year in 2007; this total increased as the overall seal population grew. The TAC for 2010 was 330,000, and it was raised to 400,000 in 2011, where it remained as of 2016. From 2017 through 2022, the DFO did not announce an official TAC for harp seals, although the reported estimated number of harp seals killed declined significantly over this time period, from 80,924 in 2017 to 27,266 in 2022.The official position of the DFO is that these levels do not harm the harp seal population and actually help preserve the cod population in the harp seals’s habitat, as the seals feed on the cod.
Animal rights activists assert that the TAC figures grossly underestimate the total number of seals killed, because many seals’ bodies fall into the water or under the ice and seals with pelt damage are discarded and therefore not counted. They also argue that the quotas do not take into account the number of illegal kills that are likely to take place as hunters fill their quotas. Scientists have countered the idea that the seal hunt helps the cod population, as cod make up only a fraction of seals' diets and overfishing has a much greater impact on cod. In addition, animal rights activists generally consider the process of clubbing or shooting seals itself to be a form of animal cruelty.
Bibliography
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