In the spring, whelping happens 35 miles north-west of the islands. The abolitionists fly over the area by helicopter to find the mothers. No one ever talks about this, and it is something I want to denounce today. At one point, they will go down and see a herd of 100 females to find out whether they are ready to whelp. Since there isn't much ice left today, the herd is very concentrated. The seals are not used to seeing helicopters. When I hunted in a rowboat, there were no helicopters. Fishing was done on the ice. I am talking about respect for the environment, for the seals and for the females when they whelped; this issue is very dear to my heart. But these people will take the whitecoats away from their mothers, bring them some place else and take pictures of them. All this happens with the infernal noise of the helicopters in the background. By the way, the fuel used in these helicopters is the most polluting kind; I think you know that. But no one says anything. I've been going out on the ice floes for 55 years. I knew the ice floes before Bardot showed up, when everything was perfectly still and quiet, but now, I look at the ice floes and see that the life of the female seals is not respected any more. As you saw this morning, when a helicopter shows up, the females are in a certain position. There's a reason for that. When you look at pictures of seals in the water, those are the mothers. Observers take pictures and work on the ice: but that land is ours and we live off the land. I want to denounce what is happening today.
I would be curious to find out which biologist would contradict me by saying that the seals eat immediately after having heard the infernal noise and felt the vibrations of the helicopters when they land on the ice. People say that the boat propellers make noise, but no one ever mentions the noise from the helicopter rotor. I would like the Canadian government to look into this issue. We developed our tourism market when the market for whitecoats disappeared. It was a matter of survival. Today, I am wondering about its raison d'être. I do not want to cause controversy in the Magdalen Islands, because those who work in the tourism industry will be very upset with me, but we all have to get real.
If the herd is frightened and the young seals are not well fed, the ice will be gone by the time they reach their maximum growth. The seals will be in the Strait of Belle Isle, 250 miles away from the Magdalen Islands. That's what's happening today. The hunt will be held more and more often in the Strait of Belle Isle because the ice will have disappeared from the gulf. We have to protect the herd from noise. As Jérémie said a little earlier, they fly so close to the ice floes that they scare the beaters into the water, so that it's not possible to hunt them anymore. Just imagine how frustrated we are when we try to exercise our rights. You might have a herd of 500 or 600 seals, but then they are scared into the water and we cannot hunt them.