Sealing atrocity
Fred Williams
eloquent and descriptive.
<http://www.seashepherd.org/seals2008/blog.html>
> March 30, 2008
>
> by Peter Hammarstedt (1st Officer)
> On Board the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat
>
> It's been three years since I was grabbed by the nape of my neck,
kicked behind the knee, and thrown to the ice by a Department of
Fisheries and Oceans officer desperate to keep footage of the seal hunt
from reaching the mass media. With my face firmly pressed against the
cold hard ice, the government thug twisted one arm behind my back, bent
my wrist at ninety degrees and thrust his knee into my back. I yelled
out in pain. Between bursts of crude French vulgarity, he whispered
into my ear, "I hope that this is hurting you enough you bastard" and
answered my cries with another twist of my wrist.
>
> Far beyond my line of sight, a crew of six baby killers walked back to
their ship accompanied by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. Between bashing in the soft skulls of 3-4 week seal pups, they
had assaulted five of our crew, broken the nose of another and
deliberately targeted our property and person. They were free to go.
>
> As I tuned out the raging Quebecois sitting on top of me, I tried to
make sense of it all. Witnessing a seal being killed - pain compliance
holds, fines and jail time. Mercilessly butchering defenseless seals
and assaulting members of the international media community - pats on
the back and seventy dollars per pelt. Through the corner of my eye, I
saw one friend and shipmate hauled away in handcuffs. Just past him,
another close friend was dragged by her feet into an awaiting Coast
Guard helicopter. With the purest of intentions we had come to the ice
floes of Canada to defend life and were being treated as criminals. Two
of the most compassionate people that I knew were about to be put
behind bars. Overnight, the whole world had gone crazy.
>
> In Eastern Canada, right was wrong and wrong was right.
>
> It was then that I saw her, somewhere between my two arrested friends,
a grey and black-spotted seal stared at me with her big black eyes. She
was ten meters away and seemingly oblivious to all of the chaos around
her. Because of our intervention at least she was safe. At least the
sealers were being escorted back to their ship; their day of sealing
was prematurely over. Maybe we couldn't save the world, but we could
save the whole world for this one animal. And nothing that the
government thugs from Ottawa dished out was comparable to what this
innocent creature would experience if there were nobody on the ice to
protect her. She was my anchor in reality. At least something still
made sense. Defending her was right. No fine, jail term or physical
violence would convince me otherwise.
> That was 2005. I still have nightmares from the seal hunt. I saw a
white heaven of ice turned into a blood red sea overnight. But because
of that one moment, there is no where else I'd rather be every March
than on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
--
Regards,
Fred
<http://www.fredwilliams.ca/thesecretofmoney.html>