Families angry over sealers’ deaths
March 31, 2008
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THE families of four Canadian seal hunters who drowned when their trawler flipped while being towed say the coast guard killed them.
Two crewmen from L’Acadien II were pulled from the icy waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence by another sealing boat after the accident on Saturday, but captain Bruno Bourque and crewmen Gilles Leblanc and Marc-Andre Deraspe were killed.
A fourth crew member, Carl Aucoin, is missing presumed dead.
“The coast guard sunk them,” said Damien Deraspe, Mr Aucoin’s brother-in-law.
“There were always risks, but this wasn’t a hunting accident, it was a towing accident.” he told The Star newspaper.
Joel Arseneau, the Mayor of Iles-de-la-Madeleine, the Quebec town where the men were from, said their families were owed an explanation.
“There is an anger among friends of the victims about the result of the coast guard’s rescue operation”, he told the paper.
“The men were under the coast guard’s responsibility.”
The Star said L’Acadien II, which was taking part in the annual harp seal hunt, radioed the coast guard after losing its rudder.
Witnesses said the coast guard was towing the stricken vessel too quickly and did not notice the trawler had swerved into ice and flipped.
The search for Mr Aucoin had ended, with the coast guard saying “all hope had diminished for his survival”.
Canada’s Chronicle Herald said Mr Deraspe, 20, was a star ice hockey player for the junior A Restigouche Tigers in New Brunswick.
The seal hunt has been called off for now, partly out of respect for the dead, and because of the dangerous ice near the hunting grounds.
The harp seal quota this year is 15,000 seals. So far, about 1000 have been killed.
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