Guardian weekly: First person 620

Hope for Canada's hunted seals?

The annual commercial seal hunt has begun in the Gulf of St Lawrence despite increasing international opposition and an any-day-now vote in the EU to ban the trade of seal products. Rebecca Aldworth, director of the Humane Society of Canada, explains why, after 10 years of documenting the seals' short lives, she believes these friendly and trusting mammals are worth more to Canada alive than dead
A pup harp seal searches for its mother off the coast of the Magdalen Islands, Quebec
A pup harp seal searches for its mother. Photograph: David Boily/AFP/Getty Images

Every year for the past decade I've been going out to film the seal hunt off the coast of Canada. For the first few years I'd go out during the slaughter, after the hunt had begun, but then one year I spent some time with the baby seals before they were killed. They were the saddest days of my life.

We fly out there by helicopter. It's more than 60km offshore, on the sea ice that forms in the Gulf of St Lawrence. We land on the ice and walk on foot to where the seals are.

The first thing that strikes you is the stunning brilliance of the ocean landscape, full of icy floes and formations, hues of blue and gold that form all around you. I think it's the most beautiful place on earth. The only sounds are the sea lapping at the edges of the ice and the cries of the baby seals. They lie on the ice, sleeping and nursing from their mothers. It's one of the most tranquil, peaceful scenes that I can think of.

I try to interact with the seals, but I'm very respectful; they're newborn pups and I don't want to harass them. I found that the best way to see them up close is to lie down near a group of them and pretend to be asleep. They can't resist this and I quickly find myself surrounded by little white-coated pups.

Another thing I do is look through the blow holes in the ice that the seals use to haul themselves up out of the water. If you look down you can see them swimming in the ocean underneath you. They come right up to you, to about two inches away from your face, and stare at you. Sometimes whole groups of them.

The seals are such trusting and charismatic animals. We're usually the first humans they've seen and they are utterly unafraid. But of course, this isn't the last interaction they will have with people. Each time I go out there it weighs on my mind that in a few weeks I'll have to come back and document their deaths.

Our reason for going out to see the seals before the hunt is so that we can show the world what an amazing wildlife spectacle it is, something that Canada can be proud of. Then, when the hunt begins, we take journalists and film crews up there to show how the very same seal pups we had photographed in their natural environment are being subjected to the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet.

The European Union is scheduled to vote on this as early as the first week in April, which unfortunately will be after the start of the seal cull. The hunt starts on different dates in different areas, so it will be ongoing when the vote takes place.

But I'm encouraged by what I saw last year. Just the fact that the EU was discussing a ban on the trade of seal products was enough to convince a lot of hunters to stay at home. As a result more than 50,000 seals were spared from death. It was an unusual feeling for me to have while I was out there this year, standing on the ice floes with these trusting and helpless animals, knowing there is a chance that many of them will survive.

It's clear to us that the EU wants to see a ban on the trade of seal products. The UK government's position is particularly clear, advocating as it does an unconditional ban. There is an early-day motion that has the support of 134 members of parliament, from a variety of parties.

The only problem is that the British rapporteur working on this case, a Liberal Democrat called Diana Wallace, has moved away from a ban and is proposing a labelling scheme instead. This labelling scheme is opposed by more than 50 animal protection groups in the EU, who all believe it will promote trade and encourage seal hunts. It's a potentially devastating blow to the Humane Society's campaign.

Wallace's proposal would look at the regulations in each country and use them to determine whether a hunt was humane or not. And based on those regulations she would label products as having come from hunts that did not cause avoidable pain and suffering. This is a serious concern for me as Canada has had a lot of regulations over the years, but almost none of them are ever applied in the field.

The Canadian government has been talking to the European Parliament, trying to achieve compromised positions that will allow it to continue plying its seal trade while at the same time making it look as if the EU is doing something. The reality is that commercial seal hunts can't be monitored effectively because of where they happen and how spread out they are and how many hunters are involved. There is no way to certify how an animal has been killed.

I've met a lot of people who support seal hunting and who take a very strong position against the EU ban on seal trade. Interestingly, what they all have in common is their support of the idea of Wallace's labelling scheme, which I think goes to show the extent to which it's just a cover for continued trade.

A lot of people who live in the seal-hunting areas want to see the hunts continue, but far more in my opinion want to see them end. Several people out there are making a good living from seal watching as opposed to seal hunting. In one of the regions where the hunt goes on, Îles de la Madeleine, there is an eco-tourism company that brings tourists out to see the live seals. It's an industry that brings more money into the region than seal hunting does or ever will.

It's important to remember that the people involved in seal hunts are commercial fishermen, and only a tiny fraction of their annual income comes from killing seals. Last year the hunt brought in less than $7m to the Canadian economy; the hunters themselves made less than $800 each. Even in Newfoundland, which is where 80% of the seal hunters live, the hunt accounted for less than 1% of the gross domestic product and less than 3% of the fishery.

I'm advocating that the federal government in Canada implements a fair licensing permit programme, through which they can buy back the hunters' sealing licences and compensate them for lost income. Several people in the sealing industry actually support this idea. After all, the hunts are dangerous and people can get injured out there on the icy seas; some have died. Several hunters would prefer to take a payment like that and stay at home than go out and kill seals.

However, the Canadian government isn't very receptive to the idea, they claim that seal products are a viable industry and have a market. That's why I believe it's vital for the EU to ban the trade of seal products; only when it's clear that there is no future in seal hunting will the government consider buying out the industry.

It's an amazing feeling to go out to the ice floes this year and be with the seals, knowing their fate rests in the hands of the EU, a group of decision-makers who are compassionate, who care about the lives of the seals and who are responding to European citizens' calls for an end to the trade. Here we are, finally, at the end of a decade of watching the births and deaths of these defenceless animals, knowing that there is a chance that many of them will survive.

• Rebecca Aldworth was speaking to site editor Anna Bruce-Lockhart.

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