ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Animal rights groups are fuelling their helicopters, loading their gear and preparing for a new, more difficult venue as Canada's East Coast seal hunt moves to the ice floes of the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The hunt opens Wednesday in the northern Gulf and it will present the only real opportunity this year for hunt opponents to get the visual images they need to fuel their campaign to stop the annual slaughter on the ice.
The Canadian government's decision earlier this week to prohibit observers during the opening days of the hunt in the southern Gulf, combined with poor ice and few seals, cut off the traditional, more convenient staging ground for the annual stand-off between hunters and observers.
Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society of the United States, which has long opposed the seal hunt, said Tuesday it was reprehensible for the government to restrict access to the southern Gulf, even if the hunt didn't amount to anything more than a couple of boats and no more than 50 seals.
"To us, that says there's something the Canadian government didn't want the public to see,'' Aldworth said.
"In this case, I believe it was the image of just a few seal pups clinging to tiny pans of ice and seal hunters still coming with clubs and guns and shooting and killing every last pup they could find.''
Aldworth said she had to do a lot of arguing with Fisheries Department officials on Tuesday who wanted to restrict the number of helicopters in the northern Gulf to one per observer group.
By the end of the day, humane society members were told they could take out two of their three helicopters, which will be carrying journalists from as far away as France and South Korea. "It's an enormous logistical undertaking,'' Aldworth said.
Fisheries Department spokesman Phil Jenkins said the government is not trying to hide anything.
"The idea is to make sure we don't have a situation where we have 30 people surrounding one sealing vessel,'' Jenkins said.
"It's an inherently tense atmosphere. We're just trying to lower the emotional temperature out there.''
Aldworth will not reveal her exact whereabouts except to say she is on the west coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Observing the hunt in the northern Gulf is difficult for animal rights groups because they face far more animosity from people living in small communities on the coast of Quebec and Newfoundland.
Last year, the humane society had difficulty getting helicopters refueled and, at one point, Aldworth and her companions were trapped in a hotel for several hours by angry local residents.
"We've kept a very low profile,'' said Aldworth, a native of Newfoundland. "Our location is undisclosed because of the effort last year to prevent documentation of the commercial seal hunt.''
Observing the northern Gulf hunt is also made more difficult by the greater offshore distances involved compared to the southern Gulf, which is within easy reach of Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton.
The largest part of the annual hunt is in a third area called the Front off northern Newfoundland. It is inaccessible to protesters because it is so far offshore.
This year, about 70 per cent of the total quota of 270,000 seals will be taken at the Front.
The opening has yet to be announced for the Front hunt.
Members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will also be observing the hunt in the northern Gulf.
The committee is in the final stages of writing a report on the hunt and members believe it would add credibility to their findings to observe the hunt first hand.
Nova Scotia MP Rodger Cuzner, a Liberal, said the seal hunt is an issue that raises alarm bells simply because of its bloody nature.
"The stark fact is we're talking about blood on the ice,'' he said.
"The truth is it's an abbatoir on ice. If you eat meat at all, the meat you're eating came through some kind of similar process.''
