Hunt on the defensive
(apr. 21, 2008)
northernpen.ca

Capt. Paul Watson does a good job of getting under a person's skin. He can be overly offensive, hurl insults at politicians, belittle hard-working people, show disrespect towards families dealing with the loss of loved ones and mock marine law - all while brandishing a dirty, cold and calculating grin.

He's a child of the media age and knows what to say, where to say it and when to say it to extract the most benefit for his cause and that of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Capt. Watson is not a new face on the animal rights scene, but as an activist, he's been relatively low-key in recent years. This year, perhaps sensing that he was in a position to strike a lethal blow against the seal hunt, he and his co-horts have ramped up the rhetoric.

You don't have to go very far to get an opinion on the man and what he stands for. From the open line shows to the coffee shops to the kitchen tables, the sentiment, at least in the majority of places in Newfoundland and Labrador, is the same - people are seething.

Even Loyola Hearn, normally unflappable as Canada's Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, showed that his patience with Capt. Watson's shenanigans had reaching a breaking point. He called the captain and his colleagues "money-sucking manipulators." Though the action of seizing the protest ship the Farley Mowat may have played directly into Watson's hands, the Canadian government had little choice but defend and protect the sealers who were obstructed and harassed while pursuing seals.

In fact, there was plenty of rhetoric, mistruths and blatant lies tossed around last week in the latest skirmish of what's become an ongoing seal war. Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, waded in the trenches again with the statement that the seal hunt is unprofitable and that the industry is propped up by government subsidies. She recently put distance between herself and Capt. Watson when she removed herself from the society's advisory committee. She said she couldn't support Watson's comments that he valued seals more than he valued the lives of four Quebec sealers who drowned off Cape Breton. However, there she was, jumping on Watson's bandwagon again and talking nonsense about how the hunt was "inherently inhumane, dangerous for workers and damaging to Canada's international reputation." Ms. May undermined her already weak arguments when she foolishly proclaimed that the government should buy out sealing licences and create an eco-tourism industry to make up for the sealers' lost income.

While the antics of people like Capt. Paul Watson and Elizabeth May make for good theatre on national television, they're just a side show to the biggest threat confronting the seal hunt. A move by members of the European Union to ban the importation of seal products in their countries is like a sledgehammer that could effectively destroy the seal hunt. The resurgence in the industry in recent years and the higher prices being paid for seal pelts was founded on the principle of supply and demand. Sealers benefited from the demand by earning an income from sealing many of them once thought was impossible.

There's reason to be worried that all of that will come crashing down. Natural Resources Minister Kathy Dunderdale paints a gloomy picture following her return from a tour of European Union countries. She was part of a delegation trying to make a pitch to parliamentarians that a ban on seal products would levy a devastating blow against sealers and the fragile economies of small towns in Northern Newfoundland and Northern Canada. She wasn't optimistic that their efforts were effective, lamenting that there's a groundswell of opposition to the seal hunt throughout Europe.

The message is simple: If EU countries won't permit the importation of seal products, there's no demand, and if there's no demand, the prices paid for pelts will plummet. We've already seen this year that many sealers opted not to take part in the hunt because prices had been slashed.

In the end, we may not have to stomach the rants of Capt. Paul Watson for too much longer, but he and those of his ilk will still be smiling and getting under our skin because they will know that they have won.