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A harp seal can be legally killed as soon as it has begun to moult its white hair, around 2 weeks after birth. Adult seals
are also killed. The seal hunt is one of the very few hunts that occurs in the spring when young are being born. As a result,
roughly 80% of the seals killed in the commercial hunt are 'young of the year' - between approximately 12 days and 1 year
old (Source: DFO, Proceeding of the National Marine Mammal Review Committee, Feb. 1999).
Younger seals (ragged jackets and beaters) are usually killed on the ice with clubs or hakapiks (a device resembling a
heavy ice-pick). Later in the season, beaters and older seals are usually shot with a rifle, both on the ice and in the water.
It is also legal to use a shotgun firing slugs. It is illegal to deliberately capture seals using nets, although seals are
often caught incidentally in nets set for other fisheries.
The recent Department of Fisheries and Oceans Stock Status Report on harp seals notes that, "If Canadian catches [of harp
seals] remain at the current levels, continued increases in Greenland harvests will have a negative effect on the population
size."
In 2000, 91,602 harp seals were reported landed in Canada out of a quota of 275,000. Ninety-three per cent of these seals
were less than 1 year old. Only 10 hooded seals were killed, out of a quota of 10,000. Lack of markets for seal products and
high gasoline prices were blamed for the low catches. The annual Greenland catch of harp seals has been increasing in recent
years and is now reported to exceed 100,000 animals (Source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 2000 Seal Quota Report. Catches
to date: June 15, 2000. Stenson et al. 2000).
It is worth noting, however, that the "landed catch" statistics provided by the Canadian government should not be misinterpreted
as the total number of seals killed. These reports only count the number of seals that are "landed" at seal processing facilities.
They do not include seals that are killed during Greenland's hunt of the same population, nor do they account for seals that
are wounded but escape ("struck and lost"), or animals that are killed incidentally in fishing nets.
A recent study, "Estimating Total Kill of Northwest Atlantic Harp Seals, 1994-1998", in the peer-reviewed scientific journal
Marine Mammal Science concluded that in 1998 the actual number of harp seals killed was somewhere between 406,258 and 548,903.
This compares to the 282,070 animals reported landed by the Canadian government
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