Voice from the Deep!

The Canadian seal “hunt” has been suspended for a week so that the sealers of the Quebec’s Magdalen Islands can return home to bury three of the four sealers killed by Canadian Coast Guard incompetence. The fourth is still missing and is presumed dead.

Some of the Magdalen Island sealers will not be returning.

According to the Canadian media:

Wayne Dickson hasn’t caught his quota of seals this season. But the 53-year-old says he no longer has the will to hunt after watching his friend’s sealing vessel capsize while being towed by a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the weekend. Dickson and his six-member crew managed to rescue two fishermen, but three other sealers drowned and a fourth is still missing after the damaged L’Acadien II fishing vessel overturned while being dragged over a large chunk of ice, about 70 kilometres north of Cape Breton Island. “I just don’t have the heart for it - I don’t think many of the guys are going back out,” Dickson said Tuesday. “It is just too devastating.”

In the last week, two sealing boats have sunk, numerous sealing boats have broken down, the government failed to rescue the crew of the boat they were towing after their tow capsized the vessel and then they twice rammed the Farley Mowat with a large ice-breaker.

The crew of the Farley Mowat also observed the ice-breaker running down and crushing seal pups on the ice and they observed absolutely no enforcement of the humane regulations with regard to killing the seals.

“We’ve seen seals suffering in agony on the ice. We’ve seen enough to know that Canada’s claim that the seal hunt is humane has no credibility” said Farley Mowat communications officer Shannon Mann 35 from Alberta. 

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.

“One of the sealers was quoted as saying that he felt absolutely helpless as he watched the boat sink with sealers onboard,” said Captain Paul Watson. “I can’t think of anything that defines helplessness and fear more than a seal pup on the ice that can’t swim or escape as it is approached by some cigarette smoking ape with a club. This is a seal nursery and these men are sadistic baby killers and that might offend some people but it is the unvarnished truth – they are vicious killers who are now pleading for sympathy because some of their own died while engaged in a viciously brutal activity.”

An Canadian enquiry is underway with regards to the death of the four men. Four Magadalen Island sealers died when their 12 metre sealing boat capsized while being towed by a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker at night on the 30th March 2008.
 
The boat had lost steerage about 40 miles North of Cape Breton Island. The Canadian Coast Guard responded to its distress signal and placed the vessel under tow.

The Canadian Coast Guard towed the 12 meter aluminium (aluminum to you yanks) hulled boat through thick broken ice generated by the towing ice breaker. The small boat hit a large chunk of ice and was capsized. The captain of the ice breaker had decided to leave the sealers onboard their small boat while it was under tow. Two of the crew were rescued and the other four, who were below decks sleeping, had drowned.

A fisherman aboard a sealing vessel trailing the disabled boat said the light icebreaker Sir William Alexander pulled L’Acadien II over a large chunk of ice, pitching it on its side as it came out of the water.

The small “sealer” fishing boats are not ice capable and they need the ice breakers to clear a path to the seal colonies.

Bruno-Pierre Bourque, one of two known survivors, said a combination of speed and inattention by the coast guard crew led to the accident. Bourque said he was at the helm of the rudderless trawler when the icebreaker sped up.

“It all happened very fast; it was dark,” Bourque told Radio-Canada’s all-news channel RDI.

“A big piece of ice was suddenly in front of us; we couldn’t avoid it. We tried what we could but without a rudder there wasn’t much we could do. . . . There was nobody on the icebreaker who was monitoring the tow.”

As the boat flipped, the six hunters inside scrambled to get out but only three succeeded, he said. Dickson’s boat moved in and his crew plucked Bourque and another survivor from the sea, Bourque said.

Bruno Bourque, Bruno-Pierre Bourque’s father and the ship’s captain, was among the dead. Coast guard officials confirmed that the icebreaker attached a tow rope to the fishing boat at about midnight and it capsized 90 minutes later.

L’Acadien II was part of a fleet of 16 boats that left the islands on Wednesday and Thursday. Arseneau said the hunters have cancelled the rest of their season and the boats are returning home out of solidarity for their fellow hunters.

News of the accident quickly spread through the community of Iles de la Madeleine, a group of a dozen islands about 80 kilometres north of Prince Edward Island’s eastern tip.

L’Acadien II was part of a fleet of 16 boats that left the islands on Wednesday and Thursday. Arseneau said the hunters have cancelled the rest of their season and the boats are returning home out of solidarity for their fellow hunters.

News of the accident quickly spread through the community of Iles de la Madeleine, a group of a dozen islands about 80 kilometres north of Prince Edward Island’s eastern tip.

In total, hunters are allowed to take up to 275,000 animals this season, virtually all of them young harp seals. About 70 per cent will be slaughtered next month in a vast area north of Newfoundland known as the Front.

Here is a Google Earth link to the areas.