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An Enviro's Case For Seal Hunt By Terry Glavin

1280 Words6 Pages

"An Enviro's Case for Seal Hunt" (2013) is an opinionated article by author and journalist Terry Glavin, arguing against the controversy and negativity surrounding the Canadian seal hunt. The author states that not only is sealing humane, it is also sustainable. Glavin bases his article on his experiences and research with various environmental organizations such as "the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, etc." (Glavin, 2013, p. 166). Because of his personal experiences with environmental issues, Glavin's article presents a strong bias. This bias is heavily prevalent throughout the article, and there is little in terms of factual informations to support Glavin's argument. Much of the article is focused more on why anti-hunt …show more content…

Seal populations have tripled to around six million (Glavin, 2013, p. 166), with "roughly 6000 fishermen... [taking] slightly more than 300,000 harp seals annually" (Glavin, 2007, p.166). Friscolanti's article, in support of Glavin's statement, says that "this year's quota of 335,000 amounts to a tiny percentage of the overall population which, since the 1970s, has tripled to 5.8 million" (Friscolant, 2006, para. 6). Glavin also brings up how much the fishing industry draws from the ocean for comaprison. "In the 1950s, the world's fishing fleets were taking roughly 40 million tonnes of marine biomass from the world's oceans every year. By the 1980s, it was 80 million tonnes" (Glavin, 2013, p.167). Glavin makes it seem like sealing takes less from the sea than commercial fishing. But Glavin misrepresents the information by using different measurements, comparing weight to individually counted seals. And while some of Glavin's numbers are supported by Friscolanti's article, much of his information lacks citations and references.While this article is not scholarly and does not require citation, the fact that Glavin does not provide any way of validating his information weakens his …show more content…

He compares the mass extinction of various animals 65 million years ago (Glavin, 2013, p. 167) to the depletion of big fish in the sea. This presents a false analogy fallacy (Henderson, 2013, p. 52), as the extinction of dinosaurs and near disappearance of cod have very little in common, and appears to exaggerate the situation regarding the exhausting populations of fish. Furthermore, the article later goes on to discuss sustainability in fisheries (Glavin, 2013, p. 168-169), veering off the topic of defending seal hunting. The author makes references to how the Marine Stewardship Council and their "eco-label" are forcing fisheries to take up more sustainable practices (Glavin, 2013, p. 168-169). This information appears to be encouraging the reader not to boycott seafood because the seafood is becoming more and more sustainable. However, the point of the boycott was to stop the hunting of harp seals; if people wanted to support the swilers, they would not boycott in the first place. This becomes red herring information (Henderson, 2013, p. 52) because it takes the focus off seal hunting, and provides irrelevant

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