The Canadian Seal Harvest - A Timeline

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The modern era

• A 2010 harp seal population survey found the harp seal population to be healthy and abundant at approximately 9 million animals, nearly four times what it was in the 1970s.
  
• In February 2011, the Government of Canada requested the establishment of a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel challenging the European Union ban on the trade of commercial seal products.
  
• In July 2009, the European Union adopted a ban on the commercial trade of all seal products, with a limited exemption for Inuit products. Regulations implementing the ban came into force in August 2010.
  
• In February 2009, following the recommendations of the Independent Veterinarians Working Group, the Marine Mammal Regulations were amended to further enhance the humaneness of the seal harvest. Amendements provided clarity on the three steps in the humane harvesting of seals – striking, checking and bleeding - and a prohibition on the use of a hakapik or club as the initial tool for harvesting a seal that is one year or older.
  
• On April 12, 2008, the Captain and the First officer of the Farley Mowat, were arrested and charged for interfering with the 2008 seal harvest. Both individuals were later found guilty of offences under the Fisheries Act and were subsequently sentenced to a total of more than $46,000 in fines and a prohibition from entering or being within any sealing area at any time between March 1st and May 30th, for a period of five years.
  
• In April 2008, following the L’Acadien II incident, the Coast Guard implemented a moratorium on the Assistance to Disabled Vessels Policy on towing vessels of less than 33 metres in ice with people aboard. This moratorium remained in place until the policy was officially adopted in December 2010.
  
• In March 2008, L'Acadien II, a fishing vessel based out of the Magdalen Islands, broke down in the ice northeast of Neil's Harbour, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The vessel capsized while under tow by a Coast Guard icebreaker. Three of the six crewmembers died in the incident.
  
• In December 1987, a government decision prohibited the commercial harvest of whitecoats or bluebacks and hunting from large vessels. This decision arose from recommendations by the Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing in Canada, which issued its report and recommendation in 1986.
  
• In 1983, the European Economic Community banned the importation of whitecoats and bluebacks. Between 1983-1995 an average of only 52,000 harp seals were taken annually, far below the quota.
  
• Harp seal landings dropped to 120,000-200,000/year in 1972-82. In addition to the quota system, landings were affected by the introduction of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
  
• Quota management was introduced in Canada in 1971.
  

1900s and 1800s

• After WWII, smaller diesel ships and longliners were used in the hunt and landings ranged from 250,000 - 300,000/year.
• In the early 1900s large steel steamships that could break through ice replaced lighter wooden steamers.
• 41 wooden seal vessels were lost at sea between 1863 and 1900.
• Sealing facilitated the spread of permanent settlements on the northeast coast of Newfoundland where previously only a summer cod fishery had taken place.
• The departure of the sealing fleet was a major event every March for people in St. John's, who gathered on the wharf for the occasion.

Disaster on the ice In 1914, the crew of sealers aboard the "Newfoundland" were left unprepared on the ice for two days with little food and light clothing during a fierce snowstorm. 78 men froze to death on the ice, and many of the 55 survivors lost limbs and were crippled for life. In addition to this tragedy, another 175 sealers died doing their job that year.

1800s

• Seal oil was the main reason for the early commercial hunt. Large quantities were shipped to Britain to be used as fuel for lamps, as lubricating and cooking oil, in the processing of leather and jute, and as a constituent in soap.

• By the 1860s, the hunt accounted for about one-third of Newfoundland's exports.

• By 1857, there were 370 vessels and 13,600 men engaged in sealing.

• Catches further increased following 1820 and reached a peak in 1832 of more than 740,000 seals.

• Catches rose to an average of 100,000 for the period 1804-1817.

In the beginning …

• Offshore hunting began in the late 1700s. Average reported annual catches were 27,000 for the period 1723-1803.

• Men involved in two or three day hunting excursions near their homes were known as "landsmen" because they reached the seals on foot.

• Settlers from the North Shore of the St. Lawrence and the northeast coast of Newfoundland began hunting seals commercially in the early 1700s.

• There is evidence that seal hunting occurred as far back as 3,000 years ago (early Dorset culture).

• Inuit people of the Thule culture about 1,000 years ago harpooned seals.

• The French explorer Jacques Cartier found Labrador Inuit hunting seals when he sailed into the Strait of Belle Isle in 1534.

• By the end of the 16th century, seals were a crucial part of the European fleets' catch on their annual fishing expeditions to the Magdalen Islands.

• Basque, Breton and Norman fishers caught seals at the end of the 1600s.