New money for Quebec seal hunt study draws praise, protest

After rejecting a scientific study that involved culling 1,200 grey seals from the BrionIslandnature reserve in the Magdalen Islands, the province is helping to financesimilar research nearby.

• Quebec nixes proposed cull of Brion Island grey seals, to dismay of local biologist

The $72,904 in funding will allow a University of Prince Edward Island researcherto studyan unspecified number of grey seals harvested onCorps Mort, or Dead Man's Island, a few kilometres west ofthe Magdalen Islands archipelago.

Plan B gets green light

Pierre-Yves Daoust is pleasedthe Quebecgovernment decided to support an alternative proposal.

"We always felt that the Ministry of Agriculture was working hard to provide us with some financial support to carry out our work, and that's what has happened," said Daoust, a wildlife veterinarian and pathologist at the Atlantic Veterinary College at UPEI.

Daoust plans to harvest the seals to collect a variety of samples from their blubber and organs in order to analyze the animals for contaminants, heavy metalsand potential pathogens.

People have more commonly hunted harp seals, but some MagdalenIslands fishermen have been advocating a grey seal hunt, arguing that their exploding numbers are depleting fish stocks.

• Seal hunters call on Quebec to allow hunting on Brion Island

Daoust's analysis will serve to determine if Magdalen Islanders can turn grey seals into quality commercial products.

"This is extremely important for them from an economic point of view," he said.

The original proposal to kill more than a thousand seals on Brion Island, a nature reserve just northof the Magadelen Islands archipelago,was rejected by the province in late December because of its commercial nature.

An estimated 10,000 seals live on Brion Island.Daoust said Dead Man's Island has far fewer seals, possibly no more thanseveral hundred.

Cull opponents 'deeply disappointed'

Some opponents ofthe seal hunt are appalled by the decision.

"We are deeply disappointed to see this so-called study funded,"said Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International Canada, callingthe study a make-work project for the commercial sealing industry.

• UPEI veterinarian behind rejected seal cull proposal plans to move forward

She called the harvesting of grey seals the most cruel commercial sealing she has seen, and she said she doesn't believe an effort to create a market for them will be successful.

"Like commercial whaling, this industry is gone. It's time that our government stop using tax dollars from an unwilling public to keep this industry on artificial life support."

"There is no future in commercial sealing of grey seals or any other species of seals in Canada," she said.