(the following has nothing to do with CarolC or her obcession with making every argument about herself)
"Taking into account this unrecorded killing as well as the killing of harp seals in the unregulated open-water hunt in Greenland, along with mortality caused by fisheries bycatch, it has been estimated that a total of around 465,000 harp seals in the northwest Atlantic population were killed each year from 1997-1999. These figures exceed the current replacement yields of the population and there is therefore concern that the population is declining as a result. The level of the current hunt is, on average, at the same level as it was in the 1950s - 1970s, when the northwest Atlantic harp seal population declined by as much as 50%. Population models considered by a meeting of the Canadian National Marine Mammal Review Committee in April 2000 calculated that the harp seal population would decline if hunting were to continue at the current level and age structure.
The killing of "whitecoats" (pups younger than 2-3 weeks) for their fur was a major part of the Canadian and East and West Ice hunts. In 1983 however the European Economic Community, in response to public opinion, instituted a ban on the import of whitecoat products, a move that resulted in a drop in the number of seals killed. The hunting of whitecoats in Canada for commercial purposes has now been banned since 1987, but is still permitted for personal use.
It is thought that the illegal killing of whitecoats may have taken place in 1997 when a conservation group reported that up to 20,000 whitecoats had been killed and illegally sold."