Sealing is an off-season activity conducted by fishermen from Canada's East Coast. They make, on average, a small fraction of their annual incomes from sealing—and the rest from commercial fisheries. Even in Newfoundland, where 90 percent of sealers live, the government estimates there are only about 4,000 fishermen who actively participate in the seal hunt each year.
Seals are killed primarily for their fur, which is used to produce fashion garments and other items. There is a small market for seal oil (both for industrial purposes and for human consumption), and seal penises have been sold in Asian markets as an aphrodisiac. There is almost no market for the meat, so seal carcasses are normally left to rot on the ice.
It is legal in Canada to kill seal pups when they are about 12 days old. During last year's hunt, almost all the seals killed were 3 months old or younger. Many had not yet learned how to swim or eaten their first solid meals. Baby seals are helpless and have no way to escape from the sealers' clubs.
Sealers may kill seals with wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns.
It is important to note that each killing method is demonstrably cruel. Because sealers shoot at seals from moving boats, the pups are often only wounded. The main sealskin processing plant in Canada deducts $2 from the price they pay for the skins for each bullet hole they find—therefore sealers are loath to shoot seals more than once. As a result, wounded seals are often left to suffer in agony—many slip beneath the surface of the water where they die slowly and are never recovered.
Other sealers bludgeon the animals with clubs and "hakapiks" (clubs with metal hooks on their ends) and drag the seals-who are still conscious-across the ice floes with boat hooks. An estimated 42 percent of the animals are skinned alive. Hunters toss dead and dying seals into heaps and leave their carcasses to rot on the ice floes. Veterinarians who have investigated the hunt have found that hunters routinely fail to comply with Canada's animal welfare standards.

Quietly behind the scenes ARAN continues to work to support the international campaign to save the seals and earlier this year we worked with HSUS to lobby Irish MEP's to support an EU ban on seal products coming into Europe, thankfully their support was hugely overwhelming. Canada's annual seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on Earth.
Check out ARAN’s website to find out what you can do


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