They suffer agonised and lingering deaths. The Canadian authorities pay the sealers twenty cents for every pup they can kill. The baby seals are clubbed to death in scenes of medieval cruelty. The weapon used is a club, the brutal hakapik. Sometimes the seals are skinned alive.
Sealers often use sharpened steel hooks to drag the creatures on board their vessels.
This practice is illegal, but using the hooks saves the killers time. It also causes horrific suffering to their victims. Seal-clubbing is justified, we learn, because its victims are adversely affecting the profits of the Newfoundland fishing industry. Human callousness has few limits. Often, alas, very little.