No commentary. This graphic footage was captured by covert filming of the annual seal cull on one of Namibia’s highest security beaches, Atlas Bay, a lucrative diamond mining area.
You are encouraged to share this on facebook/twitter as widely as possible. If you want to embed it on your website or require HD version or high resolution photographs, please contact Earthrace in advance and let us know.
Earthrace Conservation calls for an immediate halt before thousands more seal pups are brutally killed. Until Namibia stops this brutality, we urge people to boycott it as a holiday destination.
The footage, released July 2013, shows dozens of seal pups being driven across the beach to be clubbed to death by a team wielding what appear to be pick axe handles before their carcasses are loaded into a pick-up truck for disposal.
Only two countries in the world persist with this barbaric practice — Canada and Namibia, and the hunt in Namibia is the biggest in the world. It makes no economic sense to continue with it in the face of International condemnation now that it is has been proved beyond doubt in South Africa that stopping seal hunting has no detrimental effect on fisheries, and that most of the world, including the whole of the EU, has banned the trade in seal products.
It makes no ecological sense as Cape Fur seals are already listed on Appendix II of CITES and are under threat from repeated mass die-offs, entanglement in fishing gear, illegal shooting by fisherman, and bad fisheries management leading to scarcity of food.
It’s time for the Namibian Government to wake up and start using Cape Fur seals as the precious eco-system and eco-tourism resource that they are, instead of shedding their blood on the sand.