An animal advocacy group says sealers were guilty of "terrible cruelty" during the annual seal slaughter in Canada.
The "hunt" off eastern Newfoundland ended last night after Fisheries and Oceans Department officials judged that their quota of 246,900 seals had been killed.
Nearly 100,000 harp seals were killed last month in
the Magdalen Islands, a Quebec archipelago in the Gulf of St Lawrence.
Canada is permitting sealers to kill a total of 350,000 harp seals on the ice floes this year.
"I've observed the Canadian seal hunt each year for the past five years," said Rebecca Aldworth, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
"This year we saw terrible cruelty, and almost no Government monitoring of the hunt," she said in Toronto.
"Just metres away from us, conscious seal pups were sliced open. They were dragged across the ice with boathooks.
"Injured seals were left to die in stockpiles of carcasses."
Herald Feature: Conservation and Environment
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