page_title: Seal hunting
section_title: Traditional seal hunting
hierarchical_section_title: Seal hunting / History / Traditional seal hunting
caption_attribution_description: Eskimo Seal Hunting
context_page_description: Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. Seal hunting is currently practiced in ten countries: United States, Canada, Namibia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Most of the world's seal hunting takes place in Canada and Greenland.
  The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans regulates the seal hunt in Canada. It sets quotas, monitors the hunt, studies the seal population, works with the Canadian Sealers' Association to train sealers on new regulations, and promotes sealing through its website and spokespeople. The DFO set harvest quotas of over 90,000 seals in 2007; 275,000 in 2008; 280,000 in 2009; and 330,000 in 2010. The actual kills in recent years have been less than the quotas: 82,800 in 2007; 217,800 in 2008; 72,400 in 2009; and 67,000 in 2010. In 2007, Norway claimed that 29,000 harp seals were killed, Russia claimed that 5,479 seals were killed and Greenland claimed that 90,000 seals were killed in their respective seal hunts.
context_section_description: Archeological evidence indicates the Native Americans and First Nations People in Canada have been hunting seals for at least 4,000 years. Traditionally, when an Inuit boy killed his first seal or caribou, a feast was held. The meat was an important source of fat, protein, vitamin A, vitamin B₁₂ and iron, and the pelts were prized for their warmth. The Inuit diet is rich in fish, whale, and seal.
  There were approximately 150,000 circumpolar Inuit in 2005 in Greenland, Alaska, Russia, and Canada. According to Kirt Ejesiak, former secretary and chief of staff to then-Premier of Nunavut, Paul Okalik and the first Inuk from Nunavut to attend Harvard, for the c. 46,000 Canadian Inuit, the seal was not "just a source of cash through fur sales, but the keystone of their culture. Although Inuit harvest and hunt many species that inhabit the desert tundra and ice platforms, the seal is their mainstay. The Inuktitut vocabulary designates specific objects made from seal bone, sinew, fat and fur used as tools, games, thread, cords, fuel, clothing, boats, and tents. There are also words referring to seasons, topography, place names, legends, and kinship relationships based on the seal. One region of Canada's north is inhabited by the Netsilingmiut, or "people of the seal." The title of Ejesiak's article acknowledged the pivotal 1991 publication entitled Animal Rights, Human Rights by George Wenzel, a McGill University geographer and anthropologist who worked more than two decades with the Clyde Inuit of Baffin Island. Wenzel's "scholarly examination" of "the impact of the animal rights movement upon the culture and economy of the Canadian Inuit" was among the first to reveal how animal rights groups, "well-meaning people in the dominant society through misunderstanding and ignorance can inflict destruction" on a vulnerable minority.
  Inuit seal hunting accounts for the majority of the seal hunt, but just three percent of the hunt in southern Canada; it is excluded from the European Commission's call in 2006 for a ban on the import, export and sale of all harp and hooded seal products. Ringed seals were once the main staple for food, and have been used for clothing, boots, fuel for lamps, as delicacy, containers, igloo windows, and in harnesses for huskies. Though no longer used to this extent, ringed seals are still an important food and clothing source for the people of Nunavut. Called nayiq by the Central Alaskan Yup'ik people, the ringed seal is also hunted and eaten in Alaska.
  Seals were also hunted in northwest Europe and the Baltic Sea more than 10,000 years ago.
caption: Inuit seal hunting
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