Sunday, March 30, 2008
Eco-publicity conundrum
So, this strikes me as a rather painful, if welcome, eco-publicity conundrum. Under the headline "Thick ice hinders controversial seal hunt," we read:
Canada's annual seal hunt, which the government promised would be more humane this year, cranked up slowly on Friday because of thick ice.
The government is allowing hunters to kill up to 275,000 young harp seals on the ice floes off Eastern Canada, but only three had been reported killed on the first morning of the hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
"It's a very slow start," said Phil Jenkins, spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, noting that sealing boats were finding it difficult to get to the herds because of thick ice.
You know, for a country that can get tediously sanctimonious about Gitmo and such, the clubbing of baby harp seals is a pretty damned hideous stain on the national reputation. Not that I'm against hunting, mind you, but there ought to be some challenge or artistry to it. Since baby seals are not that dangerous, you might have to inject sport artificially by, say, rigging up one baby harp seal in 10,000 to explode on first contact with a hunter's club. Yeah, that would also annoy the animal rights crazies, but they would have the comfort of knowing that the seal at least took a hunter with him. And imagine the ratings if you then filmed the hunt for reality television.
Then, when all those guys who deliver neurotrauma unto baby seals for a living quit because they do not want to be blown up, we could recruit them to serve as guards in our hopefully still extant network of secret prisons. The humiliation of Canada would then be complete.
(Kidding, guys. I remember my days as a primary school student in Dundas very fondly.)
CWCID: Not without irony, Small Dead Animals.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Mar 30, 08:39:00 PM:
Point of clarification: There is no "baby seal" hunt anymore. Criticize it if you wish, but try to avoid being a tool of Heather Mills.
Though, to be fair, baby seals are just the younger, cuter version of the 600 lb cod eating water rats they grow into.
I didn't always feel this way, but one day I made the mistake of eating some actual seal meat.
Extinction is not too harsh a penalty for tasting that bad.
By , at
Sun Mar 30, 08:48:00 PM:
SAVE A PENGUIN EAT A LEOPARD SEAL
By , at
Sun Mar 30, 08:54:00 PM:
Given your complaint I hope you're a vegetarian.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Mar 30, 09:37:00 PM:
Actually, I am not a huge opponent of the harp seal hunt. But only because I rarely work up a lot of concern over such things. To me, the primary entertainment in the story was that the Arctic ice got in the way...
Anon 8:54 -- Seriously? One must be a vegetarian in order to object to the massive harvesting of a cute and fuzzy wild animal? C'mon. These things are aesthetic judgments, and I'm saying that young harp seals are way cute.
By , at
Sun Mar 30, 10:37:00 PM:
I thought with global warming the sea ice would be thinner. Why is it too thick?
