Самая крупная охота на тюленей за полвека

Each spring, the East coast of Canada is host to one of the world’s most beautiful wildlife spectacles.  It is here that female harp seals gather by the hundreds of thousands on newly formed sea ice to give birth to their pups.

The seals give birth from late February until mid-March, transforming the once barren ice floes into a huge, white nursery.  The newborn pups will be transformed into fat, fluffy ‘whitecoats’ in about a week, thanks to the high-fat content of their mother’s milk. 

After about 12 days, the mother leaves her fully fed pup to join adult males for the annual mating ritual.  The baby seals remain on the ice, crying for their mothers at first, then becoming extremely quiet and still.

During this time the seals survive on the thick layer of blubber they have accumulated during nursing.  A few days later, their white coats are lost to reveal the sleek, black-spotted, silvery pelt of the young harp seal known as a “beater.”  A pelt they will soon be clubbed or shot to death for.

From Beauty to Devastation in Just A Heartbeat

The scene is stunning – a world built entirely of blue, grey and white. The only sounds are the wind, the ice cracking and heaving, and the soft mews of the pups.

Yet just days later, this pristine wonderland is transformed into a makeshift factory for the mass killing of baby seals as sealers descend upon them in boats, helicopters and snowmobilies, armed with clubs and guns.

Over the past three years, the government quota has allowed over 300,000 seals to be killed each year.  But many more have died without being accounted for, leaving more than a million seals bludgeoned or shot to death, all in the name of profit.