The Canadian Press
Dangerously thin ice kept members of the Commons fisheries committee off the floes Wednesday as the seal hunt opened in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Instead, Cape Breton-Canso MP Rodger Cuzner and five colleagues observed the hunt off the south coast of Newfoundland from a Canadian Coast Guard vessel about 100 metres from the harvest.
Thin ice appeared to be keeping the seals away, too.
“Our chopper pilot, who has been flying with the (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) for 20 years, said he has never seen this lack of ice,” Cuzner said by telephone from Newfoundland. “
(DFO officials) believe a fair amount of seals have left by the Cabot Strait. It is still too early in the season to say where they are, though. Others believe they continue to move north.”
Newborn seals cannot swim in the first weeks of life and need solid ice to survive.
