The Jean-Matthieu Sails To Seal Hunt

Only one boat left the islands to sail to the seal herd and participate in the annual seal hunt, the Jean-Matthieu.  She left the wharf on Sunday morning at four o’clock in the morning and headed for the Lower North Shore, with a dozen seal hunters.

They went to find the small herd of seal that the Canadian Fisheries and Oceans plane had spotted off St. Augustine, near Blanc-Sablon, Quebec . The Jean-Matthieu is scheduled to arrive Monday morning at the hunting site, after thirty hours of navigation. 

The owner of the butchery shop, la Boucherie Côte à Côte, seal hunter Réjean Vigneau is on board the ship. His purpose for hunting the seal is to supply seal meat to approximately twenty restaurants in the province of Quebec.  They are hoping to attain at least a thousand seal per day.

The seal hunt officially opened on Friday, March 26^th, 2010, in spite of the unusual absence of ice in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.