sealing

The hunting of seals. Seals are killed for their meat, blubber, and their skins, which are sold as fine furs. Conservationists have campaigned to stop the killing of seals for fur, with some success. The EEC banned the import of seal pup skins in 1983, causing the virtual collapse of the market for seal skins. However, seal hunters from Norway and Russia still cull large numbers of harp and hooded seals on the pack ice off Greenland and the White Sea.

The most widely hunted seal today is the Northern fur seal Callorhinus ursinus, which is still hunted commercially on the Pribilof Islands off Alaska. Hunting of seals was at its height during the late 18th century; the Antarctic fur seal was hunted so intensively that by 1822 the species was almost extinct. In 1798 one expedition alone killed 100,000 Juan Fernandez fur seals Arctocephalus philippii from one of the Juan Fernandez islands; by 1807 hunting had almost ceased.

In December 1995 the Canadian government announced a 30% increase in its limit on seal hunting along the Canadian Atlantic coast, representing a new allowance of 250,000 seals a year.