Stop the Canadian Seal Slaughter Martin Sheen Speaks Out Against The Seal Hunt       WMV Warning: Graphic footage Windows Media Player required 1 min. 1.7MB The Canadian commercial seal hunt is the largest mass slaughter of marine mammals in the world, and Canada has slaughtered over 320,000 seals in March and April! During the last three years, the Government of Canada has delivered the death sentence to over one million baby harp seals. During the last two months, Canadian seal killers viciously slaughtered over 320,000 seals. Thousands more have washed up on the beaches of Newfoundland. Canada has yet to announce a new kill quota for the next three years. What we need to do now is to promote the international boycott of Canadian seafood products.

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Sea Shepherd believes the following about the Canadian seal slaughter:

• The slaughter of seals is incredibly cruel (a post mortem survey has shown that 42% of these babies are skinned alive)
• It is a threat to the survival of the species
• It is a threat to the survival of cod
• It is a slaughter done mainly for unessential, vanity, and luxury items, and therefore, is unnecessary
• It is unethical to slaughter newborn seal pups (About 95% of the seals to be slaughtered are babies less than four weeks old)

The Sea Shepherd flagship Farley Mowat returned to Bermuda on April 21st, two months after departing on February 21st for the cold and treacherous waters of first, the Gulf of St. Lawrence then to the Labrador Front in April.

It was a successful campaign. We did not stop the seal slaughter. We did not think we could, not this year. What we did do was to elevate international public and media awareness of the slaughter. The Canadian government was forced on the defensive.

Eleven of our crew were arrested for filming seal killers without permission from the government. These arrests will give us the opportunity to challenge these censorship regulations as violations of the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights.

Despite the regulations and despite attempts by the Canadian government to prevent us from entering the ice floes, we did break our way into the floes and we were able to block and annoy the sealers. We were there as the eyes and ears of the world community to document the lies continuously spewed forth by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Canadian government states that the seals are killed humanely. Our documentation has proven otherwise.

This April, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the seals had the support of the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat in the ice and crews from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) who flew by helicopter to the ice when weather permitted.

The advantage the ship gave to Sea Shepherd was the ability to stay with the sealers in the ice despite the weather.

Now that the ship has made it back safely, the next phase of our campaign is beginning. The boycott of Canadian seafood is being promoted by many organizations and has two parts:

1. We are asking individuals around the world to refrain from buying Canadian seafood from restaurants or grocery stores until the slaughter of harp seals is ended.
2. We are recruiting restaurants, hotels, and food distributors to agree to not sell or serve Canadian seafood until the slaughter of harp seals is ended.

If you would like to take action to help promote this boycott, please visit What You Can Do.

We need to expose what the Canadian government would like to keep hidden. We need to once again document the horror of the blood-drenched ice floes and the pitiful suffering of the young seal pups as they die. We need to make the world look at the horrific images to keep this atrocity from disappearing out-of-sight and, therefore, out-of-mind.

Please stand with us on the ice floes off Eastern Canada and hold up the banner for life, for the defenseless baby harp seals and their mothers.

Your donations will help us make our final preparations and purchase the fuel and provisions needed to make this campaign a success. To learn more about what you can do now to help stop this slaughter from continuing, please visit What You Can Do. We thank you for your support.