350.000 Seal pups are slaughtered each year ...
The planned slaughter for 2006 is 325,000 harp seals.
from the website of Harpseals organization Please visite this website
APRIL 5, 2006 The Slaughter Continues
Sealers in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence killed at least 19,500 seal pups. (They don't count pups they wound, who escape and die later.) The killing is over in this part of the Gulf, but seal pups have been washing on shores, dead, presumably from drowning. Pups only learn to swim weeks after they are born, so they depend on good ice conditions. Now, sealers in the northern Gulf region are killing seals, with a quota of 70,000. The sealers of Newfoundland and Labrador will begin the massacre on the Front on April 12, with a quota of 235,000. The ice is sparse in this area, as it was at the beginning of the slaughter in the Gulf, where many, if not most, of the pups drowned due to the lack of ice.
March 25, 2006. One of the first victims of this senseless slaughter: a raggedy-jacket harp seal shot by sealer appears to still be conscious.
Harp seal pups start with white fur and molt over a period of a few weeks. This seal is so young, he/she is just beginning to molt. Yet the DFO allows seals just starting to molt to be killed.
CBC reports that the 19,500 seals officially killed in the southern part of the Gulf exceeded the quota by 1,000. There are no penalties for exceeding the quota. Seals also died from "natural causes", washing on shore in Cape Breton. These "natural causes" could include man-made global warming, resulting in the worst ice conditions in recorded history.
