Why Seal Hunting Is Good and What We Can Take Away From the Practice.

Since the 1960’s, western media has been plagued with anti-sealing (anti seal hunting) campaigns, labeling the practice as being cruel, inhumane and a product of greed. Videos of seals being clubbed circled the internet with little information attached to them, most of the clips being from the spring hunt that occurs in southern Canada. As most people didn’t ever think to really look into the subject, they assumed that all seal hunting in Canada is like this, and that adorable tiny seals are being killed for fun, to inflate someone's ego, when the reality of the practice is far from being any of those things.

Seal hunting is a long-running tradition of 4000 years amongst many Inuit communities in Canada. Many people in North-eastern Canada and the Canadian arctic (note: not the south) heavily rely on it for fur and food, especially since food costs are extremely high in those regions. Every year during more commonly winter time, Inuit hunters set out to hunt adult ringed seals and harper seals with the intention of using every single part of them, making the hunt 100% sustainable. Unlike how the media usually portrays it, the process is quick and unharmful to the seals, having been often done with a hunting gun, instead of a club. The hunters are always aware of the population of seals there are in the water, making sure that they only hunt the amount they need without disturbing the ecosystem. The nutritious meat, including the organs, can feed a full family for multiple days. The fur/leather can be used to make traditional sealskin coats that are warm enough to last extremely harsh weather, earrings, and more articles of clothing which can be sold to provide a source of income for families. For this reason, seal hunting is so incredibly important within these communities that are in general heavily impacted by poverty and hunger. Yet, because of misconceptions, it is now almost impossible for seal skin to be represented in the global market and impossible for it to be in the European one, after the UN placed a trade ban on it in 2009.

The only thing the tradition had done was supply families with food and warmth for generations without greatly harming ecosystems. It is unfair how all forms of seal hunting were punished just because a few Canadian hunters didn’t respect the practice. If anything, we could learn and take notes from the model to do more sustainable hunting and even apply it to the livestock industry, which accounts for extremely severe environmental impacts. Who’s fault is it that a seal is cuter than a chicken? How is it possible that animal rights activists who claim that they care about animals and the earth overlook these facts so easily? These are all questions that may come to mind when processing all this information and honestly, I think we can all agree that it is a product of the spread of misinformation and a broken system.

Yet, all hope should not be lost as there are things that we can all do to help! Spreading awareness and reporting anti-sealing campaign posts on social media and such is a great way to help with counteracting misinformation. Supporting Inuit business by buying sealskin products can help increase demand for the product. So please, let's all do our part to help put an end to the stigma surrounding seal hunting!

Sources:

https://www.sealharvest.ca/history/

https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/inuit-defend-canadas-seal-hunt#:~:text=Inuit%20hunt%20seal%20all%20over%20the%20Arctic.&text=They%20hunt%20mostly%20ringed%20seals,ve%20migrated%20that%20far%20north.

https://theconversation.com/how-europes-ban-on-seal-products-turned-frontier-communities-into-pariahs-161730#:~:text=Europe%20was%20the%20primary%20market,%2C%20citing%20%E2%80%9Cmoral%20concerns%E2%80%9D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Ns94DWAQ8&t=6s