Canada's annual seal hunt is set to start despite the continuing outcry of animal rights activists and an international effort to ban imported seal products.
The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans said the smallest stage of the largest marine mammal hunt in the world would start in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence on Monday.
This year's total allowable catch has been set at 280,000, up from 275,000 last year.
Seventy per cent of the seals will be killed in an area off Newfoundland's north coast known as the Front, while 30 per cent will be taken in the Gulf of St Lawrence - the first stage of the hunt.
Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International Canada, said the world community was starting to move away from the commercial seal slaughter and her group would be there to monitor the activities.
"It's something we do every year. We come up here and we document what happens, but it never gets any easier," Aldworth said on Sunday.
The start of the hunt comes three weeks after a European Parliament committee endorsed a bill that would impose a ban on the import of seal products to the 27-member union.
The same bill granted an exemption to Canada's Inuit to continue to trade seal products for cultural, educational or ceremonial purposes.
To become law the bill must be approved by the entire EU assembly and EU governments.
The committee's decision came despite an intense lobbying effort by Canadian politicians looking to convince the European body that the commercial seal hunt is humane.
Sheryl Fink, a researcher for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the move toward a ban was a sign the public's appetite for the seal hunt was waning.
"We are optimistic that we are starting to see a bit of change," said Fink, whose group also plans to monitor the hunt.
"I do think the writing's on the wall."
The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972. The Netherlands and Belgium also ban seal products. The European Union outlawed the sale of the white pelts of baby seals in 1983 and Russia announced earlier this month that it would ban the hunting of baby seals.
Registered hunters in Canada are now not allowed to kill seal pups that haven't molted their downy white fur, typically when 10- to 21- days-old.
Animal rights groups say the seal hunt is cruel, difficult to monitor, ravages the seal population and doesn't provide a lot of money for sealers.
Sealers and the Fisheries Department defend the hunt as sustainable, humane and well-managed and say it provides supplemental income for isolated fishing communities that have been hurt by the decline in cod stocks.
Fishermen sell seal pelts mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil. The 2006 take of some 335,000 seals brought in about $US25 million ($A36 million).
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