You say that the battle is over
You say that the war is all done
Well tell it those with the wind in their nose
Who run from the sound of the gun
Write it on the sides of the great whaling ships
On the ice floes where conscience is tossed
With the wind in their eyes, it is they who must die
And it's we who must suffer the lost.

 

- David Mallett (recorded by John Denver)

 

The 2004 Sea Shepherd Campaign to defend the seals is now officially underway.

In late March of 2004, the rifles and clubs of Canadian seal killers will bring chaotic violence to the nursery floes of the harp and hood seals.

The government of Canada has approved a kill quota of 350,000 seals. This is the largest mass slaughter of a marine mammal population on earth. It is a subsidized orgy of blood where seals scream in agony as bullets rip through their bodies and brutish clubs smash young and fragile skulls. The beautiful bluish white ice floes off Labrador and Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence will run red with innocent blood.

This atrocity has no place in a civilized world and no place in the 21st Century.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been fighting this horrific massacre of seals since 1976. Captain Paul Watson has led ten expeditions, including three ship campaigns - to oppose the seal slaughter, three on the Labrador Front and seven in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

In two months he will lead another ship campaign, taking the Farley Mowat into the ice to confront the seal killers and to expose their gruesome industry to the international public.

 

We must never surrender to the forces of greed and cruelty. The sealers say they will never stop the slaughter, that it is a tradition and a part of their culture. I say that we will stop it because tradition and culture must not be the deceptive mask behind which this kind of sadistic cruelty can continue to hide. We fight for innocence and for the right of the harp and hood seals to live their lives unmolested by the perverse hand of man. We will end this horrific atrocity because if we do not, it will mean surrendering to all that is base, corrupt and ignoble within human kind. We seek a victory for gentleness, kindness, respect and harmony between humankind and sealkind. We fight for the defenseless against the remorseless. We fight for life against those who preach death for profit. We champion the survival of a species that is being scapegoated for the incompetence of the Canadian and Norwegian bureaucrats. We fight to stop the slaughter and to stem the flow of blood upon the ice. We fight for the salvation of the future from those who lack vision in the present and fail to learn from the mistakes of the past. How much longer can we suffer the agonizing screams from the ice? We take action because echoed inside the dying screams of the seals, we can hear our own death sentence, faintly but there nonetheless, for what we sow we will reap and killing the innocent for profit will realize it's own retribution - not just for the guilty, but for us all. -Captain Paul Watson

The volunteer crew of the Farley Mowat, have come at their own expense from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, France, Canada, and the United States. They know the risks they are taking and they all believe that it is important to take a stand on the ice for the seals.

The Farley Mowat will enter the ice floes in late March to seek out sealing ships and sealers. Our only weapons will be cameras and the courage of the crew. The objective is to bring this annual orgy of blood and slaughter to the attention of the world once again because memories are short and most people are unaware of this continued massacre of seals.

350,000 young seals are sentenced to a cruel death by the Canadian government in 2004. 350,000 were slaughtered in 2003 and the quota for 2005 will be another 350,000. This is a million seals to be killed in a three year period. What kind of heartless bureaucracy could sanction such an atrocity?

This is what one leading Canadian politician said when he was Fisheries Minister for Newfoundland. Today he is a prominent member of the Federal government.

 

"Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the six million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed or sold, or destroyed or burned. I do not care what happens to them. The fact is that the markets are not there to sell more seals. What they (the fishermen) wanted was to have the right to go out and kill the seals. They have that right, and the more they kill the better I will love it." - John Efford, Canadian Minister of Natural Resources

Canada has warned Sea Shepherd to stay away from the seal hunt. Captain Paul Watson was once threatened with death by two Mounted police officers after a severe beating in 1979. He was viciously beaten again in 1995 by sealers. He remains undeterred. "I may have been beaten but it is the seals that are dying. They will have to kill me to stop me from returning."

 

Now the blame cannot fall on the heads of a few
It's become such a part of the race.
It's eternally tragic that which is magic
Be killed at the end of the glorious chase
From young seals to great whales from waters to wood
They will fall just like leaves in the wind
And we've fur coats and perfume and trophies of walls
What a hell of a race to call men.

 

- David Mallett

 

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is seeking sponsors to help get our ship the Farley Mowat to the ice floes by the end of March. We need two hundred tons of fuel for the voyage to the ice and back. A ton of fuel costs $300. We can send the Farley Mowat and her crew to the harp seal nursery floes for $60,000 which is half the price some groups pay to place a full page ad in the New York Times.

If you support sending a crew of seal defenders to the ice, please consider making a donation to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

A $300 donation buys a ton of diesel fuel. A $150 donation buys a half-ton of diesel fuel. A $75.00 donation buys a quarter ton of diesel fuel. And donations of any amount are needed and welcomed.

For any donation of $100 or more, Captain Paul Watson will send an autographed copy of his recently published book Seal War! - 25 Years on the Ice with the Harp Seals.

 

Donations can be made online: http://www.seashepherd.org/donate.html
or sent to:	Sea Shepherd Conservation Society P.O. Box 2616 Friday Harbor, Wa 98250
Or in Canada:	P.O. Box 48446 Vancouver, B.C. V7X 1A2