With more than 352,900 seals beaten or shot to death, this year's Canadian seal hunt was the largest since 1971. The number of seals killed in the hunt, which began on November 15, 2003, exceeds the official quota of 350,000 set by Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), but there have been no reports of punishment for this violation.

Nor is exceeding the quota the only alleged violation during this season's hunt. As it has done every year, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a founding member of the seal protection coalition, sent representatives in March and April to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and northeast of Newfoundland to document the slaughter. What they witnessed wasn't pretty.

Contrary to what a DFO spokesman told The Washington Post in April of this year—"Over 98% of seals are killed humanely, meaning their death was relatively quick"—IFAW's representatives witnessed sloppy and brutal killings, widespread violations of hunt regulations, and little government enforcement.

A View to a Kill

IFAW seal team leader Rebecca Aldworth witnessed pups being skinned alive as well as injured seals being piled up near the fishing vessels, left to suffer and eventually die. She also saw sealers routinely ignore Canada's most basic humane regulations.

For instance, Canada's marine mammal regulations require hunters to perform the eye-blink reflex test, a simple procedure that involves touching the seal's eyeball before the hunter skins it. If the seal blinks, it is not brain dead and will experience pain. Aldworth rarely saw a sealer perform the test. She also saw seals convulsing while being skinned—macabre proof in her mind that the animals did indeed still feel pain.

Sherri Cox, the Canadian director of IFAW, described a typical scene on the ice: "A sealer clubs a seal and immediately turns to club another and another and another, before he turns his attention back on the first seal so he can skin it."

To get a full picture of what the 2003-2004 Canadian seal hunt really looks like, just multiply this scene by the 3,500 participating sealers. As captured by photographers who have witnessed the hunt from their helicopter perches, large patches of ice are literally covered with bright-red, freshly skinned carcasses. From the air, the skinned seals look like a massive colony of fleas, blood red and somehow frozen in time on the ice.

If that sheer quantity weren't difficult enough to swallow, IFAW representatives also caught on videotape one of the worst incidents they have ever witnessed during the seal hunt.

For almost an hour, IFAW recorded an injured but conscious seal who was piled with other, supposedly dead seals. The animal was vocalizing and trembling, but was too severely wounded to move away. IFAW observers and members of the foreign press begged sealers to put the distressed animal out of its misery. The hunters ignored the pleas. (For the record, Canada's marine mammal regulations as well as the conditions of government-issued observer permits prohibited IFAW's team from doing anything to help the suffering seal, should the team have had a way to do so in the first place. The irony is that regulations permit hunters to club and shoot seals, but not observers to help a seal in this situation, or interfere with the hunt in any way.)

IFAW officials never did learn the fate of this suffering seal. Because of dangerous fog conditions, their helicopter was forced to leave before any hunter ended the seal's misery. IFAW recorded this, and numerous other violations of Canada's marine mammal regulations, on videotape and submitted the tapes to enforcement authorities.

False Justifications

Throughout the hunt, officials with the DFO and other Canadian political bodies repeatedly have defended the hunt's sky-high quotas (nearly a million over the course of three hunting seasons) to the media. They claim the hunt is necessary to thin out large seal populations, which are allegedly causing cod fisheries to crash. Fishery industry officials declare that killing seals is the only way to save the cod industry.

What's more, Canadian officials tell everyone who will listen that the harp seal population is "exploding," growing from 1.8 million in 1970 to 5.2 million today. What they don't tell everyone is the history behind those numbers: Overhunting in the 1960s diminished the seal population to a low of 1.8 million. Today's 5.2 million figure represents a recovery, not an explosion.

In addition, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that harp seals are preventing the recovery of cod, let alone causing their decline. But then as Dr. David Lavigne, IFAW science advisor and Canadian harp seal expert, puts it, the hunt "isn't about science, it's about politics and markets."

A Groundswell of Opposition

Documented abuses and Canadian misinformation are nothing new. What's new this year is that the media is paying attention.

In April, the seal hunt made the front page of The New York Times. Major media outlets all over the globe—including those in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Taiwan—covered the story, resulting in greater media coverage than has been seen in more than two decades.

This publicity has caught the eye of politicians, scientists, journalists, intellectuals and artists, travel agencies, and the general public. Concerned citizens and groups around the world have organized demonstrations at Canadian embassies and consulates and at the stores that sell seal fur. Demonstrations and leafleting events have been held in states such as Massachusetts, New York, Nevada, and Arizona. In Europe, protests in Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Spain have captured the media's attention. More events are currently being organized.

In Mexico, 47 writers and artists—spearheaded by Homero Aridjis of El Grupo de los Cien (Group of 100) and including Marie-Jose Paz, the widow of Nobel laureate poet Octavio Paz—signed a petition demanding that Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin end the seal hunt. "With indignation and sorrow, we are witnessing one of the most systematic and cruel exterminations of animals ever authorized by a 'civilized' government,'" the petition stated.

Editorial boards and commentators across the political spectrum have protested the seal hunt, in such media venues as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, and South Bend Tribune. Letters to the editor have shown up in newspapers in the United States (The New York Times) and Canada (the Globe and Mail, Waterloo Record, and The Calgary Sun). Politicians are getting an earful as well; individuals continue to bombard the Prime Minister, the Canadian Tourism Commission, Canadian ambassadors, and other officials with letters and calls protesting the hunt and threatening to boycott Canadian tourism.

Politicians Join the Protest

In the United States, Carl Levin's (D-MI) Senate Resolution 269 opposing Canada's seal hunt, now has a total of 21 cosponsors, including Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably reported the resolution for action by the full Senate. In January, Belgium stated its intent to ban the importation and sale of sealskins and oil along with dog and cat fur. What's more, several European nations are currently discussing legislation that would ban the import of seal products. In early June, Belgium enacted such a ban.

All this international activism shows that when animal protection groups join forces to educate decision-makers and the public, progress can be made. The Canadian government is facing intense condemnation from all sides. Concerned citizens in Canada and elsewhere should continue to voice their opposition to the hunt to Canadian officials.

It is our hope that Canadian officials will soon realize that their nation's international reputation is more valuable than this unsustainable, unnecessary, and finally indefensible hunt.

If you'd like to help stop this annual slaughter of seals, we have a few suggestions.

Andrea Cimino is the Campaign Coordinator for The HSUS's fur program.