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Last updated at 9:45 PM on 15/02/10

Sealers, activists keeping tight-lipped about plans for start of N.S. hunt
THE CANADIAN PRESS


SYDNEY, N.S. — Sealers and anti-sealing activists performed a delicate dance Monday as they tried to reveal as little of their plans as possible while they await the start of the grey seal hunt on Hay Island off Cape Breton.
Fishermen haven’t said who their buyer is or where the seals will be processed once the hunt begins, likely later this week.
Activists with the Humane Society International are staying at a hotel in Sydney waiting for the hunt to proceed so they can document it with video and still photography.
The activists have a boat ready to launch but didn’t want it photographed because of concerns about interference.
They said they’ve had problems in the past, but have been well treated since arriving in Sydney a week ago.
“We’ve been mobbed three times in Newfoundland. ... We’ve had vehicles damaged,” Rebecca Aldworth, a humane society executive, said Monday. “That said, this is a great city. I haven’t felt worried at all here.”
Aldworth said polls and experience show there is a “real divide” in Cape Breton on how people feel about the seal hunt.
The federal government authorized a grey seal hunt on Hay Island, starting Feb. 8 and ending March 15, but fishermen have been waiting on shore for more than a week.
Sealers must give 24 hours notice of their intention to hunt. They won’t be going out Tuesday, although a spokesman said they hope to go out this week.
Robert Courtney, president of the North of Smokey Fishermen’s Association, said sealers are waiting for the weather to improve and for the buyer to line up trucks for the pelts.He refused to say who the buyer was or where the trucks would go, saying the buyer “doesn’t want trouble.”
Sealers only harvested 256 grey seals last year, including 200 from Hay Island. This year, the government quota is set at 2,200 grey seals from the island.
Andrew Newbould, an adviser for the federal Fisheries Department, said Monday the longer fishermen wait, the fewer animals will be available to hunt.
Aldworth said the federal government should offer fishermen $10,000 or $20,000 as a buyout to stop the seal hunt altogether, but Courtney dismissed that idea.
“What are they suggesting we do with the seals?” he asked. “It’s ridiculous. The ocean can’t sustain what’s there now.
“To let the whole herd ... expand at that rate with no harvest, that’d be suicide for the seals. Once you get overpopulation, there’s a number of things that happen and none of them are good.”


16/02/10

http://www.ngnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=327090&sc=516