Commentary by Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

This morning the screams of young harp seals writhing in agony echoed across the cold wind swept ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of Eastern Canada.

Men with blood smeared on their faces swept out across the ice floes swinging their spiked clubs in a frenzy of barbaric slaughter. With each blow, a seal pup was struck, a skull bashed in, an eye knocked out, or a jaw ripped off. Some seals receive vicious kicks to the face from the sealers and other are picked up by their hind flippers and dashed upon the ice by men whose sadistic ruthlessness has become symbolic of the annual horror show that the Canadian government subsidizes and defends.

This morning the first of 325,000 young seals died and the dying will continue for weeks as the sealers invade and violate the seal nurseries delivering agony, misery and death with their spiked clubs, rifles and steel toed boots.

As the seals scream in unimaginable pain and the hot blood steams upon the cold ice, the world is kept in silence to this atrocity by the draconian measures implemented by the Canadian government to silence dissent against this heinous crime against nature and humanity.

Reporters have been banned from the ice!

In Canada it is a crime to witness a seal being killed. It is a crime to take a photograph of a dying seal. It is a crime to video tape or film a sealer doing his grisly work. Unless you have a permit and the government is not granting permits.

And the regulations that ban anyone approaching the slaughter are called the "Seal Protection Regulations."

The harp seal pup once described by the missionaries to the Inuit people as the lambs of God now scream in government dictated silence as they die out of range of cameras and the eyes of the compassionate.

How far is the Canadian government going to go to protect this horror show? How much money, time and resources is the Canadian government intending to spend to defend the actions of these monstrous baby killers who exterminate innocent creatures in their nursery?

We intend to find out.

As the slaughter begins the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat is working its way into the ice fields. Above our ship the Canadian Coast Guard is flying their planes. Ahead of us the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Navy wait to defend the seal hunter from the threat of compassionate vegetarians on a ship whose mission it is to document the slaughter of the seals.

The absurdity of it is incredible. Canadian Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn is declaring himself the angel of death to the seals and thumping his chest as the valiant defender of the rights of men to bash and slash seal pups.

The Farley Mowat is moving in closer to the slaughter, threading its way through the treacherous ice floes and around government obstacles and threats on a mission to document the truth.

Our mission this year is clear. To expose the horror and allow the world to listen to the screams of the lambs.