Melt Beats Hunters To The Punch - Most Harp Seal Pups Dead Or Dying; Lowest Sea Ice On Record

[hatrack]

Evolved to live its first months on ice, seal pup struggles through slushy water in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. March 22, 2010. (Photo courtesy IFAW)

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island, Canada, March 26, 2010 (ENS) - Thousands of harp seal pups are presumed dead in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence and starving pups are being found abandoned on the beaches of Prince Edward Island, victims of the worst ice conditions ever recorded in the region.

Environment Canada said March 16 that ice conditions in the Gulf were the lowest in the 41 years it has kept records.

Off Newfoundland, Canada's other seal hunting ground, ice has formed only off the Northern Peninsula when, by now, it has usually extended along the island's northeast coast. International Fund for Animal Welfare report that the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the annual birthing ground of hundreds of thousands of harp seals, is "essentially devoid of both ice and seals."

"The conditions this year are disastrous for seal pups. I've surveyed this region for nine years and have never seen anything like this," said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW. "There is wide open water instead of the usual ice floes, and rather than the hundreds of thousands of seal pups that we normally encounter, only a handful of baby harp and hooded seals, animals that are normally found on ice, remain on the beaches," she said.

EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2010/2010-03-26-01.html

[dkf]

1. How sad

:cry:

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Poor babies!

:cry:

[glinda]

3. This is horrible

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[FedUpWithIt All]

4. It just really hit home that this, these reports, are our future.

I've "known" this for a long time but something just snapped in me and i "felt" it. For some reason there has been a disconnect. Just now i felt what a future of watching the die off may really feel like.

I wish we could take it all back.

[Chulanowa]

5. So how's that cod harvest this year, motherfuckers?

That's why they kill them, they claim, to "protect the cod" - you know, the cod that crashed due to massive overfishing? That keep getting fished while Canadians bludgeon seals to death?

[time_has_come]

7. The cod fishery is long gone.

They kill them for the revenue.

And most are shot, not bludgeoned.

[SPedigrees]

6. The future does not bode well for harp seals, polar bears, and

any other creatures who depend on seasonal ice for their survival. They are canaries in the coal mine of climate change.

[YankeyMCC]

8. or humans ultimately