ANIMAL FORUM

Seal Slaughter Suspended for a Week

The savage slaughter of the baby seals has been suspended for a week.

The sealers of the Quebecs Magdalen Islands have returned home to
bury three of the four sealers killed by Canadian Coast Guard
incompetence. The fourth is still missing and is presumed dead.

Some of the Magdalen Island sealers will not be returning. According
to the Canadian meida: Wayne Dickson hasnt caught his quota of seals
this season. But the 53-year-old says he no longer has the will to hunt
after watching his friends sealing vessel capsize while being towed by
a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the
weekend. Dickson and his six-member crew managed to rescue two
fishermen, but three other sealers drowned and a fourth is still missing
after the damaged LAcadien II fishing vessel overturned while being
dragged over a large chunk of ice, about 70 kilometres north of Cape
Breton Island. I just dont have the heart for it - I dont think many of
the guys are going back out, Dickson said Tuesday. It is just too
devastating.

Canadian Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has accused anti-slaughter
organizations of exploiting the tragedy to underscore how unsafe
sealing is, citing that the sealers are well aware of how dangerous their
occupation is.

We did not kill these men, said Captain Paul Watson. Canadian
government incompetence and the political ambitions of Loyola Hearn
killed them. Hearn allows hundreds of undersize, wooden and aluminum
vessels into treacherous ice conditions and does not provide adequate
Coast Guard protections and training. Those men died because they
were in conditions they should not have been in and the Canadian
government put them in that position.

Canadian Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn is attempting to discredit the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society with contradictory accusations.
First he accuses Sea Shepherd of being a wealthy organization and then
describes the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat as an unsafe decrepit
rust bucket.

The Farley Mowat is an ice class steel hulled 60 meter ship that has
years of experience navigating ice conditions both in the Arctic and
the Antarctic yet according to the Minister it is unsafe for our ship to be
in the ice yet it is okay to send 12 meter fragile vessels into the same ice.

In the last week, two sealing boats have sunk, numerous sealing boats
have broken down, the government failed to rescue the crew of the boat
they were towing after their tow capsized the vessel and then they twice
rammed the Farley Mowat with a large ice-breaker.

The crew of the Farley Mowat also observed the ice-breaker running
down and crushing seal pups on the ice and they observed absolutely
no enforcement of the humane regulations with regard to killing the seals.

Weve seen seals suffering in agony on the ice. Weve seen enough
to know that Canadas claim that the seal hunt is humane has no
credibility said Farley Mowat communications officer Shannon Mann
35 from Alberta.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of
four sealers is a tragedy but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater
tragedy.

One of the sealers was quoted as saying that he felt absolutely helpless
as he watched the boat sink with sealers onboard. Said Captain Paul
Watson. I cant think of anything that defines helplessness and fear
more than a seal pup on the ice that cant swim or escape as it is
approached by some cigarette smoking ape with a club. This is a seal
nursery and these men are sadistic baby killers and that might offend
some people but it is the unvarnished truth - they are vicious killers
who are now pleading for sympathy because some of their own died
while engaged in a viciously brutal activity.

The Farley Mowat is berthing in the French islands of St. Pierre and
Miquelon until the slaughter resumes next week. The crew intends to
get the video off the ship of the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker
twice ramming the Farley Mowat.

The Canadian Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has accused Sea
Shepherd of lying about the ramming. First he claimed that the Coast
Guard did not ram the Sea Shepherd vessel, then he claimed that the
Coast Guard only grazed the Farley Mowat and then he said that it
was the Farley Mowat that hit the Coast Guard icebreaker. The video
will be able to confirm the Sea Shepherd story. The Canadian Coast
Guard has not released any video and is not expected to.

Attempts to retrieve the video by helicopter failed when the Canadian
Department of Transport grounded the helicopter from HSUS that
was going to pick up the video.

The Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat is in the middle of very hostile
territory, in the middle of dangerous ice conditions, unable to rely on
the Canadian Coast Guard for assistance, under attack by that same
Coast Guard, threatened by powerful Canadian politicians, threatened
with physical assault from armed and angry seal killers.

My crew of volunteers are all courageous men and women and they
are risking their lives and their freedom to expose the lies of the
Canadian government. Said Captain Paul Watson. They have seen,
and they have documented the cruelty of the seal slaughter. They are
there to gather evidence to support a European ban of seal products.
They do not get paid for this, they make personal sacrifices and I
resent the Minister of Fisheries making offensive remarks about their
motivations. It is amazing when compassion for life is dismissed as
radical and those who slaughter the innocent are given the full
support of the government and the Minister of Fisheries. The last
time this happened the mans name was Herod and now its Hearn.

On Apr 2, 2:38