New opportunity

John Sorenson on a plan to bring the seal hunt to Sable Island.

Unsurprisingly, the fishing industry – which blames seals for the problems the industry itself has created, namely the decline in fish stocks – is vigorously promoting this deadly plan. Also cheering it on is the Fur Institute of Canada, which says the problem is not the massive, uncontrolled commercial fishing that has almost emptied the world’s oceans, but rather the institute’s favourite target – animal rights activists. Both the fishing and fur industries will seize any opportunity to promote the killing of seals, no matter how irrational.

Wrong emotions

Canadian Seal Marketing Group’s new logo gets bad reviews.

“This is like showing a picture of a just-born calf to sell steak tartare,” said Philippe Garneau, executive creative director at GWP Brand Engineering in Toronto. “If we had our food marketed to us that way, we’d be put off of it. It is a real head-scratcher.” Advertising is an emotional medium, he said, “and this will elicit all of the wrong emotions.”

The logo itself could confuse people about the organization’s purpose, said Tony Chapman, founder and chief executive of Toronto-based ad agency Capital C, “given that it trades on the very images that Greenpeace used for years to trumpet the anti-seal-hunt message,” graphic videos of sweet-faced seals that are chased down and pummelled with clubs until they die.

“This is a save-the-seals, kid-friendly logo – I would expect to see that on a toddler’s mix ‘n’ match outfit,” he said. “And the [model's] whole shredded Mad Max ensemble just immediately brings to mind the image of a cute seal getting clubbed.”

Form-fitting

At the Fur Council of Canada’s “fur re-invented” competition.

As she watched a towering, rail-thin model strut down the runway at the Montreal fur show, Rosie Audlakiak of Qikiqtarjuaq felt like a star.

The model wore a form-fitting red sealskin vest, decorated with a pale fox and tiny tufts of raccoon, with little else, exposing her navel as she walked down the runway in front of hundreds of fur buyers at the May 3 show.

For Audlakiak, a first-year student in Nunavut Arctic College’s fur production course, it was her shining moment.

Explore elsewhere

PETA release anti-tourism video.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is launching the one-minute video that says: Canada. Explore Elsewhere.

It’s a rebuttal to a Canadian Tourism Commission ad that features a seal hopping on to a kayaker’s boat in Vancouver.

It says: Canada. Keep Exploring.

The PETA video features one minute of the East Coast seal hunt set to “O Canada.”

Light-hearted

Apple rejects iSealClub.

“I was careful not to make the game graphic or have any gore or anything. It’s very light-hearted. It’s all cartoon based.

“It’s not what you would consider a very violent game. I know it involves clubbing seals, but (it’s) no different than the way people get clubbed in Mickey Mouse or Looney Tunes.”

Smyth said he specifically designed the game to block any killing of white-coat seal pups. The adorable pups still featured in anti-sealing campaigns have been off-limits for hunters in the province since 1987.

“Because it’s been illegal to hunt baby seals, I made it illegal in the game,” Smyth said. “You can’t club baby seals. You can try, but you lose points and they just run away.”

Emasculated

The National Post on what’s left of the seal hunt.

“There has been a seal fishery in Newfoundland for 3,000 years, long before the English got here,” Mr. Crosbie says. “You became a man in those days when you went out on the seal hunt, and that’s why we are not going to be bullied into giving it up. Today, people don’t want to recognize their background. If Canadians haven’t got backbone enough to withstand criticism, tough titty.”

Easy prey

Canadian Sealers Association has good news.

Newfoundland sealers say a smaller ice pack this spring is making it easier to meet individual boat quotas this year – and the price they’re getting for pelts has improved.

Frank Pinhorn of the Canadian Sealers Association says the animals have been concentrating on the smaller floes, making it easier for hunters to get to them.

Pinhorn says so far they’ve taken about 60,000 seals out of an allowable quota of 330,000 and may kill another 12,000 before they’re done in late May.

Bad year

This year’s seal hunt not up to expectations.

Except for NuTan, all of Canada’s seasonal seal processing companies have been shuttered, forcing the Jean-Mathieu crew to “throw pelts back in the water.”

“It’s a disaster, really unthinkable,” Vigneau said. “It’s the first time ever that this has happened.”

Really slick

Fur Institute of Canada to publish cookbook.

Now something of an embarrassment for the EU, the large-format, hardbound 128-page Seal in the Modern Kitchen – published only in Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian – had never received much international notice.

But last week, the original co-ordinator of the cookbook project, Anita Storm, angry at the EU’s seal ban, gave the fur institute the green light to produce its own versions of the book, which features recipes for such haute cuisine dishes as herb-stuffed seal schnitzel and seal Wellington with Madeira sauce.

“It’s a really slick cookbook. Jamie Oliver-style,” said David Barry, the institute’s sealing-committee co-ordinator.

Not reasonable

Canadian Sealers Association disputes poll that suggests sealers want to be bought out.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of the Humane Society International/Canada, an animal rights group that opposes the hunt, said half of the 181 sealers it polled by telephone between Dec. 7, 2009 and Jan. 24, 2010 were in favour of a buyout. The poll is considered accurate plus or minus 7.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

But the Canadian Sealers Association does not see that as a reasonable option and disputes the poll’s accuracy.

“There’s 11,000 licensed sealers in Newfoundland and Labrador and I don’t know where they got the sealers,” said Frank Pinhorn, executive director of the Canadian Sealers Association in Newfoundland. “I don’t think their base for doing this survey is representative in any meaningful percentage.”