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Nova Scotia sealers harvested fewer than 500 grey seals in a recent hunt. Photo: Courtesy of Fisheries and Oceans Canada

With a 320,000-animal quota, the harp seal hunt starting today is getting worldwide attention. An already-completed grey seal hunt in Nova Scotia hardly raised a blip internationally.

Federal marine mammal advisor Jerry Conway says seals were harvested in a recently approved grey seal hunt, in January and February, along Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore, extending from Canso to Halifax.

The hunt excluded Sable Island and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The Nova Scotia hunt allows sealers to harvest 10,000 animals between the 2005 and 2006 seasons. This year's harvest is over with fewer than 500 grey seals taken.

Grey seals give birth on island rookeries along the Eastern Shore.

Mainly Cape Breton fishermen

Fishery officers inspect a club and a hakapik to ensure they are in accordance with regulations. Photo: Courtesy of Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Conway says the sealers participating in the Nova Scotia hunt are fishermen from northern Cape Breton. Most of them tote small boats down to the Eastern Shore with their trucks. The boats are launched from the shore and the sealers head for the islands where the seals are harvested.

"It's primarily done by a wooden club or a hakapik," says Conway. He describes the hakapik as a pole with a metal hammer head on one end and a spike on the other. "You use the hammer end to dispatch the seal, and the spike to hook into the seal and drag it," he explains.

Conway says there was a freeze on grey seal licences two years ago. But the Cape Breton fishermen held licences prior to the freeze and renew them every year.

Robert Courtney, of Dingwall, Cape Breton, participated in the grey seal hunt. When contacted, he said he didn't have time to talk because he was preparing for the harp seal hunt in Newfoundland.

"I will say there is a market and it is feasible," said Courtney. "That's all I'm saying."

Conway says Newfoundland companies are paying the Cape Breton sealers an average of $37 for the grey seal pelts. He says they take them over to Newfoundland in their trucks.

Grey seal population 'growing'

A grey seal surfaces from a hole in the ice. Photo: Courtesy of Fisheries and Oceans Canada

This year's hunt was limited to less than 500 because the seals left the islands early.

"Hunger drives them into the water," says Conway, who works for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. "They go into the water to seek food."

"The grey seal population is growing and growing," says Ian McLaren, professor emeritus with Dalhousie University's biology department. He chaired the federally-mandated Eminent Panel on Seal Management, which released its findings in 2002.

The panel didn't recommend a Nova Scotia grey seal hunt per se but its findings resulted in Ottawa's introduction of a three-year hunt management plan introduced in 2003. The findings also led to the government allowing a limited hunt for 2005 and 2006.

"We did a lot of investigating," says McLaren. "Although we were not dealing with issues of cruelty or observing the killing as such."

Scientists estimated the Atlantic Canadian grey seal population at 173,500 in 1997. New figures are expected this year.

Conway confirms that the grey seal population is growing. He says grey seals gave birth to 350 pups on Sable Island in 1963. This year, he says, upwards of 60,000 grey seal pups were born on Sable Island.

But the hunt is limited to the near-shore island rookeries so government officials can monitor the harvest and determine its sustainability.

Emily McMillan, director of the Sierra Club of Canada's Atlantic chapter, says the grey seal hunt is not an issue for the organization.

"Not really," she says. "It's not one of the issues we work on."

McMillan says any seal hunt is a "tender issue" with elements of both environmental and community sustainability.

Conway says the ages of the grey seals harvested range between three weeks and one year.