Oh Canada

Today the "Seal hunting season" begins in Canada.

(Reuters)This year, 325,000 young seals will be killed on the ice floes off the East Coast where the animals gather.

Unusually warm weather means the floes are a fraction of their normal size and thickness, prompting hunters to kill the seals individually rather than clubbing them to death en masse as they cluster on the ice in pools of blood.

"It's slow going. The ice is not full of seals all over the place," said Roger Simon of Canada's federal fisheries ministry, which oversees the hunt.

The crack of rifle fire could be heard continually as hunters in boats shot seals as they lay on tiny floes and then dashed over to the bodies in hopes of retrieving them before they slipped off the ice and sank.

It is not too late to act