Dutch group seeks end to seal hunt

A group from the Netherlands is on Prince Edward Island this week talking about paying sealers not to go on their annual hunt on the ice floes.

'We come here to make business.' Leni Hart

Leni Hart, director of a Dutch seal welfare group, would like to see conservation groups and governments work together to pay sealers not to hunt and so end protests on the ice and around the world.

Last year, singer Paul McCartney lent his celebrity to the protests with a visit to P.E.I.

"It will be more and more aggressive against them, I think," Hart told CBC News Tuesday.

"We come here to make business, it's normal business. We can pay you, not only to stop the hunt, but also there are other possibilities."

Hart believes the economic benefits of the seal hunt could be replaced by seal tourism and possibly a seal education centre on P.E.I. She'd like to see the Island, which only has about 20 active sealers, take the lead on this initiative.

"You have to start somewhere," she said.

Benefits beyond seal pelts

For fishermen, the seal hunt is about more than the direct sale of seal pelts. Seals have also been blamed for contributing to the decline of fish stocks.

Hart said she's spoken to fishermen on P.E.I., and they understand that the real problem is overfishing.

But the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association remains committed to the hunt, partly with the goal of restoring balance to the ecosystem in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

"The position of the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association is that we do indeed support the hunt of both grey and harpseals," said executive director Ed Frenette.

"There are 5 million harps out there alone. The ecosystem is out of whack that'stwo million more than there used to be and we support a hunt, a commercial hunt."

The seal hunt is scheduled to start in a couple of weeks, but Frenette said there is so little ice there may not be a hunt anywhere near P.E.I. this year.

"It's looking right now with ice conditions that it will be very difficult to have a hunt in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. The ice, I don't think there's any ice as far north as Montreal."

"I'm hearing that a number of sealers on the Magdalen [Islands] won't be going out this year."