Devastation

daqui

Live From the Ice

Follow HSI/Canada's Rebecca Aldworth as she documents Canada's commercial seal kill, and take action to end this bloody business»

This afternoon, we reached the scene of the commercial harp seal slaughter in the ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Our helicopter flew through gale force winds—slowed by massive gusts—to reach the carnage.

"It's hard to think about what I've just seen."© The HSUS

By the time we arrived, we had little fuel and almost no time to spend there before sundown. But it didn't take long for us to fully comprehend the atrocity happening on the ice below.

It's hard to write this, because it's hard to think about what I have just seen.

The blood was visible from the air, from 2,000 feet away. The carcasses were dumped—as they always are—left to rot in the blood of the slaughtered seals. These seals are killed for their fur in a pointless slaughter, all for vanity and fashion.

From the air, we could see the babies try to crawl away, to escape as the sealers bore down on them.

But they were no match for men armed with hakapiks and knives. In seconds, the sealers reached the defenseless pups, and beat the terrified animals to death.

We landed on the ice to observe the killing from there. We ran across the floe toward the area where the sealers were killing seals.

What was once the best place on Earth is now one of the worst.© The HSUS/Aldworth
Seeing us, they stopped their grisly work, got back on their vessel and left the area.

The sealers know that the images of the slaughter are their undoing. They will do anything to prevent us from obtaining our evidence—including occasionally leaving a few survivors behind.

Two pups remained on the floe—alone and terrified, they were left to crawl through the blood and carcasses.

These animals were born in the beginning of March. Now, just three weeks later, they have been subjected to violence more obscene than most adult humans can fathom.

I take some small comfort in the knowledge that those two seals are still alive on that pan of ice because we were there today.

What remains of the harp seal nursery is the carnage, the devastation, and the complete absence of the sounds of the seals. What was once the best place on Earth is now one of the worst.

Tirado daqui.