The Canadian commercial seal hunt is now by far the largest hunt for marine mammals in the world. In 2004, more than 365,000 seals were slaughtered - the highest kill level we have witnessed in 35 years. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans no longer pretends that this is a sustainable slaughter. In fact, the decision to raise the quota was presented as a deliberate attempt to reduce the seal population.

This disregard for conservation is exactly what led to the collapse of the cod stocks off of Canada's East Coast. And we have seen the outcome of politically motivated management of seals before. In the 1960s and 1970s, the same levels of slaughter that we are seeing today caused Canada's seal populations to decline by an estimated two thirds.

But rather than learn from their mistakes, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is choosing to repeat history. Alarmingly, their agenda to exterminate seals comes at a time when climate change is causing the very habitat of the ice breeding seals to disappear.

There are a number of factors in the hunt that make the actual kill of seals much higher than the reported kill.

Struck and lost - Climate change has resulted in a decreasing amount of ice cover in hunt areas. Today, the majority of seals are being shot at in open water. It is difficult to kill a moving seal with one bullet - it becomes even more difficult when you take into account the fact that sealers are shooting at seals from moving boats. As a result, many of the seals shot at in open water are wounded, but slip beneath the surface of the water, where they die slowly and are never recovered. It is estimated that up to 50% of the seals shot at in open water are killed but not reported.

Greenland catch - Seals are migratory. Once they leave Canada in early summer, they swim to Greenland, where they are subjected to yet another government subsidized slaughter. The Greenland hunt is entirely an open water shooting hunt, and it is likely that the actual kill is twice as large as the reported annual take of about 100,000. Regardless, Canada and Greenland do not take each other's seal hunts into account when setting their quotas.

Highgrading - One of the more valuable markets for seal products over the past seven years has been for the seal penis, which is sold in Asia as an aphrodisiac. The organs of older male seals are the most valuable, and sealers often match up the penis from an older male with the more valuable pelt of the baby seal - reporting it as one kill. This caused one DFO scientist to estimate that the actual kill of seals was twice as high as the reported kill.

Bycatch - Many seals are killed as bycatch in the other commercial fisheries - 25,000 in the lumpfish fishery alone. But these numbers are not properly factored in when setting the quota.

Kills of this magnitude are not scientifically defensible and are not sustainable. It is certain that if we allow the Canadian government to continue with their current management (extermination) approach, the harp and hooded seal populations will become endangered.