Slaughter in the Arctic circle??

[ShaqLevick]

Alright, this is my first thread so bare with me. I was just messing around crackbook and came across something that sent me into a rage, and now I feel the urge to start a little rant. What I'm talking about is Seal clubbing in the Canadian Arctic, and this one goes out to all the hippie freaks out there (you know who you are). I mean it's one thing when unbalanced drug addicts like Sir Paul McCartney try to stir the pot, but when reputable news stations such as USA Today band with organizations like PETA to petition, well then the crazies start coming out. Comments like please stop killing innocent animals and other poorly structured comments, without point or honest opinion.

Lets in short examine why one would club a baby Seal *Gasp*. Well, the most obvious point would be the destruction of their habitat (Pollution, Shipping routes, etc.), not to say the Seals per se, but it's food supplies and most importantly it's resident predators, mainly the Polar bear and Orca (Killer Whale). Lets not forget that at humans we fall at the very pinnacle of this food chain, but without a healthy Bear population the ecosystem is unable to rectify itself and clean up the sick and dying lot. Needless to say there isn't a living thing out there that wants to die disease ridden frozen to a sheet of ice.

So the brave, noble Canadian people come along to rectify the evils of man, and with a swift club to the base of the head all higher brain functioning is severed. One thing people seemed most offended by was the blood splatter, but look at it from the point that it's simply a dinner bell for all the other starving inhabitants of the North, starving because you (yes you little lady with the teary eyes) decided to purchase products produced out side of your locale.

To get slightly off topic let me mention that if we weren't on some level carnivorous we would likely in the future become solely dependent on grazing, which would offer little to no nutrition and of course would lead to a diminished brain mass. Of all my hopes and dreams for humanity, I don't feel we can grace those lofty ambitions by simply wallowing in the garbage we created.

Regardless, I may have gone off a little bit there, yet I still feel that the Canadian Seal hunt is probably one of the most humane hunts man can set out on. If a fish could express sadness to my level of understanding it would be far from impressed that I ripped him out of the river with a large barbed hook in his face...

However, all of this doesn't really open a discussion without me asking what all of you folks feel about the subject? How it effects you in your life, and if you're opposed how do you make day to day efforts to rectify the situation?

 

[Enkidu88]

Unfortunately clubbing seals isn't going to help the drastically dropping numbers of fish in the ocean or save the fisherman's jobs. There's just no way you'll be able to curb their numbers enough, unless we start a dedicated program to reintroduce natural predators into the wild. But of course then you get the idiots who go "Oh my god, you want to release man-eating Bears, Wolves, etc, think of the children!"

You'd also need to make some fishing habits that actually sustainable, which at the moment they are not. I feel for the fisherman, I really do. I mean they need money so they catch as much as they can as fast as they can, but unfortunately at the rate they're going all major fishing areas will be exhausted in a decade. Many places are already dangerously overfished.

So yeah, you can go ahead and club your seals, just don't think it's helping anyone.

 

[Baby Tea]

Confused Snip

What are you even talking about?
I couldn't make heads or tails of your point.

The seal hunt is OK, why?

 

[ShaqLevick]

You're absolutely correct Enkidu88, I have many relatives from the Province of Newfoundland and I'm an East coast Canadian as well, the blight the fishing industry is facing will never be solved. However, I still feel as predators we're doing our part. I also am of the whatever floats your boat mindset, be it fishing, deer hunting, and for some folks seal clubbing.

 

[SwimmingRock]

You're missing the key point, though: seals are adorable. That's all that matters to most people. We have to safe the 'cute fuzzy-wuzzies'. Logic doesn't work on those people. You can try to defend seal clubbing all you want, but you'll never convince them that anything adorable might need to die.

 

[ShaqLevick]

Ah, and here I've always been of the mindset of rationality.. Not that I don't see the cute fuzzy-wuzzies mindset, just always had a hard time accepting people can't see logic especially when it's so cut and dry.

 

[oppp7]

I agree about the seal part, but I don't think becoming vegetarians would lower our brain mass. We can get the same amount of nutrients from plants.

 

[ShaqLevick]

Unless you don't believe in evolution I'm pretty sure 12 Million years eating simple and complex grains would likely lower intelligence. But that's only based on the previous 12 Million years of evolution, and the proteins created in flesh not found in accessible plant life. Then again who knows the real science of it all.

 

[Drakmeire]

I just remembered the movie "Thank you for smoking" in one scene the main character brings up all the careers that get a bad rap from the media but are necessary "like the weapons manufacturer, the nuclear power plant worker, or the baby seal clubber... ok maybe not the baby seal clubber."

 

[Nickolai77]

I do think part of the outcry is too do with "clubbing", it does not sound very humane, and provokes public revultion. If you shot the animals like most hunters do, there would be less of an outcry. After all, nobody complains about elk hunting or peasant shooting. Clubbing does not sound very efficent- so why do they have to do it?

 

[ShaqLevick]

Because bullet wounds are very painful and a solid clubbing is very quick. Also guns are actually evil, and there should be no reason to produce, ship or leave discarded shells in one of the few clean environments left on the planet. Some right wing Americans (not to mention any names, but she could have been the president) believe that shooting Arctic Wolves from helicopter is appropriate, but we really need to look at the differences between the death of that seal to the Wolf who must now run through the snow and ice while its lungs are slowly filling with blood.

 

[Starnerf]

I find it ridiculous that they banned hunting the white babies because they were too cute. Why is their fur less wearable or their meat less edible than those seals who've lived a few days longer and had their fur turn grey? If you're killing cute animals, don't exclude some for being too cute.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Ok I did google it and find those seals are increasing in numbers, again after reduced to a much smaller population in the 70's. But from there to say lets kill them to increase fish stocks?! mmm... Something is wrong with this argument. Ok I accept the quotas can be increased if the population is steady, but that wont solve the fishing problem as your article seems to try to defend (even knowing it was a bit confusing and I am not sure if I understood it correctly).

 

[Agema]

Vegetarianism historically didn't work well because with the plants available in any one area of the world, dietary requirements could not generally be met. Anaemia, for instance, would be likely. In particular, plants don't have vitamin B12, and whilst microorganisms in the human gut make some, it's well short of what is needed long-term.

There's not a single amino acid (= protein) the human body cannot manufacture or obtain from plants. It's a lot easier to get all necessary by eating animals or fish, but a plant-only diet can suffice. Also, you'll very likely be lacking muscle mass more than brain mass with a protein deficiency.

However, none of this really has much to do with the ethics of sealclubbing.

* * *

Fish shortages are overwhelmingly due to overfishing by humans, not seals, so that is not a convincing motivation either. Environmental conservation due to lack of predators (mostly sharks and killer whales, to a lesser extent polar bears) is a good reason. It's also fair on the grounds if we kill all sorts of non-endangered animals for meat, hides and so on, why not seals?

However, it is fair to ask it's done humanely, with standards equivalent to abattoirs and other farming practices. The hefty objection to sealclubbing is that there's evidence it may frequently be sloppily done, the animal not killed outright or not even unconscious when it gets skinned. Although obviously, that's a case of tightening permitted killing procedures rather than stopping the hunts.

As a final note, it's a democracy. If lovers of fluffy-wuffy animals don't want the seals to die, they have every right to campaign to stop the hunts, even if it is just that they don't like the cute beasties having their skulls shattered. Treating them with contempt doesn't make their opinions any less real and any less valid.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Unfortunately clubbing seals isn't going to help the drastically dropping numbers of fish in the ocean or save the fisherman's jobs.

Anything to do with seals isn't going to help that full stop.

Curbing worldwide industrial scale over fishing will improve the numbers of fish in the ocean. Everything every seal on the planet eats in a year is probably a minor detail compared to what trawlers pull out.

 

[ShaqLevick]

I find it ridiculous that they banned hunting the white babies because they were too cute. Why is their fur less wearable or their meat less edible than those seals who've lived a few days longer and had their fur turn grey? If you're killing cute animals, don't exclude some for being too cute.

Excellent point, there seems to be no rationale in this debate in general. The cuteness factor shouldn't be applicable to any relevant conversation, as sentient intellectual beings we should only ever discuss practicality. Is it alright to kill baby Right Whales or bottle nosed dolphins, the answer is obviously an emphatic no. No not because they're adorable, but because their population can't take the loss.

 

[KnightRider0717]

I agree about the seal part, but I don't think becoming vegetarians would lower our brain mass. We can get the same amount of nutrients from plants.

ummm no, we havent evolved to digest cellulose so we wouldnt get much from the plants and you need protein in your system for cellular functions (DNA replication and producing our own proteins) and im sure we can all agree theres not a significant source of protein in a carrot

im not saying being vegetarians would decrease brain mass and find the idea a little stupid but my point is that you cant survive off plants since our bodies cant break them down

 

[sixtysix]

You are all missing the point. Under Canadian law aboriginal peoples are allowed to retain there cultural heritage, they have been doing this for hundreds of years, it is part of their identity and if they would be forced to stop the world would lose some of its diversity.

 

[ShaqLevick]

I hope nobody took away from my poorly constructed rant that I'm for seal clubbing to increase fish stock in the ocean, which would be a fairly ridiculous notion. Humans are pulling all the fish out of the waters, and there is call for serious regulation on that front. However, there simply isn't enough food for a sustainable large seal population. Only humans have the luxury of infinite growth (yet I believe we'll all see where that takes us...). All I'm getting at is that these seals that are clubbed very well may have died of starvation, and what a sin that would be. And every single person on this planet, whether willing or not has contributed to this problem. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke.

 

[JayDee106]

I have only this to say:

Seriously though , i think as long as its only done to survive by natives then it can be accepted.
As long as its not done for commercial gain, in which case it should be much more humane.

*edit* 'ninja-ring' feels good!