Mass slaughter begun

At 6.oo this morning the mass slaughter of seals began. Fortunately there is a huge amount of media interest in this event, at least back home. Krista van Velzen has been interviewed by Radio 1 and this morning I was called by the Jeugdjournaal. It is so very important that everybody what's happening out here. It goes on far away from the public view and people must know the hunting of young seals for their fur still goes on in this day and age. The Canadians are good at hiding their dirty little secret. Many people have no idea that the seal hunt still exists. Things are different back home thanks to our high profile campaigns. 97% of Dutch people, according to our recent survey, are aware of the seal hunt. According to my colleagues here the percentage is far lower in Canada itself.

We've now got our pemits and are $25 CA poorer, while the sealers only have to shell out $5 to butchers seals. The people at the DFO were surprisingly friendly when they interviewed me & I promised to behave myself out there on the ice. They even warned us to be careful since the ice is treacherous due to the heavy rain.

As we await the permits, we get a couple of juicy bits of news. At the moment there is a major standoff going on between the Sea Shepherd and the Canadian coastguard. I'm sure that this will result in a load of arrests, but then again that's exactly what they were aiming for! The second bit of news is that a number of sealing boats have found themselves in big trouble due to the appalling weather conditions. One has apparently even sunk! I'm sure that I'll be hearing more in the course of the day.

I'm due to board a helicopter bound for the ice floes at 12.30. There's another group out there right now. I'm curious about what they've seen and I hope that the weather will allow us to take off again. I'm shortly off to the HSUS base camp to try on my survival suit, There's a whole rack of them hanging there and special boots to be able to walk on the ice. I shall pull on my thermal underwea, grab my camera stuff and tripod and steel myself for the horrors that await me...