Today there are about 6,000 Atlantic Canadians active in the seal hunt. Their culture has been shaped by the inhospitable and sometimes dangerous environment in which they live and work. Sealers and their families have survived for centuries through a social system that is formed around the procuring of seasonally available food; sources from communal kitchen gardens, the harvest of wild berries, the hunting of wild game including sea birds, as well as fresh fish and sea food. From this necessity grew a culture of economic adaptation, hard work and mutual respect.

Today, all sealers are licensed and hunt from their own small fishing boats, as large vessels are prohibited for sealing. Almost all sealers are seasonal fishermen who rely on sealing to help compensate for declining stocks of commercial fish such as cod.

In 1992, over 40,000 people lost their jobs when the collapse of cod stocks off the east coast of Newfoundland forced the Canadian government to close the fishery.

In 2006, the landed value of the harp seal hunt exceeded C$30 million. To people living in isolated villages with a limited range of employment options, a few thousand dollars is significant. Considered in context, sealing can make an enormous impact on a family’s well-being: In Canada, the top homeports for sealers have unemployment rates that are in excess of 30% higher than the national average. For some sealers, the income they gain from sealing represents 25-35% of their total annual income.

To these people, seals provide a livelihood, but they also provide meat for the table. In Newfoundland, it is estimated that the edible portion of one harp seal is worth an equivalent of $150 of store-bought meat (Dakins, 2007, Loring, 1993).

The primary objective of sealers is to earn income through sales or “in kind” through direct usage of the products available from the seals they kill.

Seals provide four products: fur, leather, fat (rendered for Omega3 medicinal oil) and meat. The bulk of the meat is located in the “flippers”, which the sealers take leaving the mostly meatless carcasses on the ice to return to the eco-system, as the ice melts the carcasses slip back into the ocean and provide food for other species. What at first glance appears to be wastage is in fact a “green” solution to problem of offal disposal faced by abattoirs worldwide.

Rural, maritime peoples are dependent on their environment for their livelihood. They utilize resources such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, seals and other wildlife for exactly the same reason urbanites hold jobs in factories and offices – to provide income to feed and cloth their families.

Sustainable use of a natural, renewable resource is the internationally accepted principle of man’s use of animals for food, clothing and income in a manner that ensures the continued existence of healthy, stable (or growing) population levels of the species being utilized.

The concept is rooted in scientific management principles to determine appropriate usage levels given the biology, natural mortality and environment of the species. These factors are used to set conservationally sound, conservative quotas, which are monitored and modified on an on-going basis.

The Harp seal population of the northwestern Atlantic is a prime example of the sustainable use principle, as the population has tripled under this management regime to the present level. The principle of the sustainable use of a natural, renewable resource meets this requirement ecologically, conservationally and morally. The Canadian seal hunt is one of the world’s best examples of a “green” approach to the use of a natural, renewable resource: seals.
(Excerpts posted with permission from, http://www.thesealfishery.com

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