misspelledsearch.com:

sealing equipment

information page

If you cannot find the information you are searching for on this page, we suggest searching Google with the correct spelling "sealing equipment":

The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details. To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and conform with our NPOV policy, this article or section may require cleanup.
The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement. Please discuss this issue on the talk page. Editing help is available.

Sealing redirects here, for other uses, see sealing (disambiguation).

Seal hunting or sealing is the killing and harvesting of seals by human communities for their meat, fur, and blubber. It has been practised since pre-historic times wherever seal populations are abundant. ^{[citation needed]} During the 18th and 19th centuries, it became a major industry, particularly in the North Atlantic, with ships and gangs of sealers takings tens of thousands of seals per voyage.

Harp seals have been hunted for many years. Infant harp seals were prized in the fur trade for their whitecoats, but after being made a principal focus of anti-fur campaigns, hunting whitecoat infants was banned. Infant seals may still be killed legally once they moult, which begins at about 2 weeks of age. In many countries sealers have to land the seal meat, increasing the operational cost. Subsidising sealing has been considered in some countries in order to reduce the total predation caused by seals.

Hunting is now controlled by quota regulations after international recommendations by ICES. The seals that are hunted must be independent, self-reliant animals. Hunting of harp seal pups (whitecoats) and hooded seals (bluebacks) is since 1987 prohibited. Quotas are normally given as number of 1+ individuals (one year and older), each 1+ animal equalling 2 pups. The Canadian management set a three-year quota, including provision for transfers between years, at the start of the three year period. The Advisory Committee on Fishery Management (ACFM), ICES, has given the following statement to assess and establish biological limits for harp and hooded seals:

"Biological limits of yield reflecting very low risk of collapse must be developed within a Precautionary Approach framework. ICES discussed a recent approach on the application of the Precautionary Approach (PA) and conservation reference points to the management of harp and hooded seals, originally developed for the stocks in the Northwest Atlantic. Within this framework, conservation, precautionary and target reference points can be identified and linked to specific actions to aid in managing the resource. For seals, abundance and yield should be identified in terms of numbers rather than as biomass (as done in fish).

"Harp and hooded seals are commercially exploited to varying levels throughout the North Atlantic. The availability of scientific information concerning the status of these resources (abundance, reproductive and mortality rates) also varies between the species. A conceptual framework for applying the PA to Atlantic seal management was outlined. For a data rich species, one target, one precautionary and one conservation reference level are proposed. A target reference level could be established at 70% (N70) of the pristine population size or a proxy of the pristine population (e.g. maximum population size). When populations fall below N70, conservation objectives assume a greater role in the setting of harvest levels, and measures are put in place to allow the population to increase above the precautionary reference level. A precautionary level is established at 50% of the estimated pristine population size, while a conservation limit (or limit reference point) resulting in closure of commercial harvesting is established at 30% of the estimated maximum population size. It should be stressed that the percentages given above are just meant as an example, in this case taken from a framework suggested for the Northwest Atlantic population of harp seals. The suggested percentages resulted from a review of general models used in fisheries literature and of an approach developed in the conservation literature.

"In the northwest Atlantic, it is required that populations have at least three abundance estimates, that the most recent abundance estimate is no more than 5 years old, and that recent data on fecundity or mortality rates are available - otherwise the population would be considered data poor, and requires a more risk adverse approach to their management. In data poor situations, the uncertainty associated with the resource’s status and the impact of a particular management action increases and as a result, more caution is required. This could be accomplished by identifying the maximum allowable removals that will ensure that the acceptable risk of the population falling below this reference point is only 5%. This level has been referred to as the Potential Biological Removal (PBR) and can be approximated using default values and an estimate of abundance. Since the only data required is an estimate of population size, this or a similar approach is appropriate for data poor species. The PBR approach has the added advantage that the simulation trials used to establish the appropriate population size (NMin) ensured that the formulation is robust when the model assumptions are relaxed and plausible uncertainties are included.

"ICES notices the similarity between the suggested framework for seals and the framework used in the management of fish resources. ICES will further develop the seal framework and will propose reference points, if possible, for the different harp and hooded seal populations.

"As yet, no reference points are proposed for the individual stocks of harp and hooded seals in the Northeast Atlantic. Until such reference points are established ICES suggests that harvesting could be continued at recent levels or at levels that will sustain the stocks at present level with high probability."

Seal hunt in Canada

In Canada, the season for the commercial hunt of harp and hooded seals is from November 15 to May 15. The majority of sealing occurs in late March off the Magdalen Islands (in Quebec), and about the second week of April off Newfoundland. This spring period is generally what is referred to as the 'Canadian Seal Hunt' [1], even though it is not only Canadians the actually hunt. The hunt is controversial, with opponents referring to it as animal cruelty and inhumane. Supporters claim it is an important part of the Newfoundland economy, providing a significant fraction of the yearly income of some 11,000-13,000 fishermen[2]. However with the seal hunting bringing in only $16.5 million or less per year, its represents a tiny fraction of Newfoundland's $15.5 billion GDP, and only benefits a small fraction of Newfoundland's 500,000 people[3]. The latest quotas granted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have recently been increased to 350,000 harp seals as well as 10,000 each of hooded and grey seals. The quotas are largely accepted as sustainable by independent researchers and the herds are stable at over five million harp seals in the North Atlantic alone. ^{[citation needed]} The sustainable nature of the hunt is the main reason the focus of the protests has shifted from an environmental concern to one of alleged cruelty. ^{[citation needed]}

The harvesting of juvenile "white coats" has been banned since 1987. [4] This ban is widely believed to have been put through by the federal government out of public-relations concerns rather than out of any real threat to the seal population ^{[citation needed]}, which experiences high infant mortality rates as a matter of course. ^{[citation needed]}

Many animal-protection groups, such as International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and the WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals) encourage people to petition against the harvest. An interesting fact is that the World Wildlife Fund has not engaged in the seal hunt debate. They have noted that the current harp seal population has increased to approximately 5.8 million which is triple the population in the 1970's. [5]

Seal hunt protests have recently been organized in a number of countries but attendance was small compared to the protest's heydey in the early 1980s. Despite the continued protests, demand continues to grow for seal pelts, as evidenced by record high prices obtained for seal pelts at auctions ($70 per pelt up from $15 in the mid-1990s) that are even higher now than before the campaigns of the 1980s. [6] Further evidence of the growing public acceptance of sealing is reflected in the recent use of seal pelts by high-end fashion designers such as Donatella Versace and Gucci as well as a number of high profile graduating students from major fashion schools.

External links

ICES/NAFO Working Group on Harp and Hooded Seals
Atlantic Canada Seal Hunt Myths and Realities
CBC News - Seal Hunt FAQ
HarpSeals.org
HSUS Protect Seals Campaign
IFAW: Seal hunt
Larry King/McCartney/Danny Williams transcript from interview with Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney urges PM to stop seal hunt - Article written by Chris Morris, Globe and Mail
Respect for Animals Boycott Canada Campaign

This sealing equipment index site has been developed to help wayward users find the information they are looking for, no matter how they are mistakenly spelled or mistyped. This site is designed to help users find sealing equipment information for the following query variants:

If you would like to add or correct the content of this site, or if you are interested in supporting the efforts of misspelledsearch.com by placing your product information on these sealing equipment pages, please contact mistype@gmail.com for details.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "sealing".

misspelledsearch.com:

sealing equipment

information page

Seal hunt in Canada

See also

External links