the term used to. be. illegal. the ice flows of the white scene are home to harp seals after the winter mating season females come here to give birth however for these are tourists and explorers the fields of ice are all but empty. is not a say one it's

a serial. killer coordinates there's another one. to see the holes the seals made them. look like. the herb seal comes into the world as a white coat this is a charming seal pup has a black nose the large eyes of a child and is covered in a distinct white fur some view this creature as an object of hunting others see it as a miracle of nature they could disappear for good. harp seal verse process is complicated the pup can be born only on the ice and exclusively at the beginning of march the mother clamors up onto the ice flow to choose the best spot the payment she endures can be seen in these bloody tracks.

before turning a completely wanted to a newborn seal is green in color. the mother can tell her offspring's call and a smell from a long distance she won't approach a pump that is not her own. as a newborn grows quickly its mother's milk is almost fifty percent sure that. the pump remains a white coat for only two or three weeks before it molds its fur and turns grey this is why a juvenile pub is called a grey coat. they keep this code for a year. as an absolutely wonderful species. could begin concentrates in three locations for breeding around greenland near newfoundland here in russia people in three populations you don't need to go to places like africa you don't go up to lions and touch them you could even come to

the seal and touch it fantastic. it is in this strain that harbor seals are born the so-called throat where the whites see the barents. husband and wife sergey. from moscow are preparing for their first joint trip to the ice fields of the white scene. where my slippers have you seen them. what slippers. they're grey and they're somewhere in the rucksack and give it to me place. it's their slippers are a great place to keep ice cores and. careful they're very sharp. and yeah that's them. what about gas bottles do i take them oh. i know is

a biologist protecting harp seals is one of the projects she works on at the international fund for animal welfare her husband works for the russian ministry for emergency situations they often travel north but still haven't seen white coats in the wild. so cute look big guy who is that. why do you think that. question so on ice or in water it's papa who. and they tell line blue and white of course anna is also a rescuer except she works to rescue little seals one of theirs and we even had a white coat for hat in our office once they used white coats for that even though it's hard doesn't last long when it's not soft it goes yellow quickly and it stinks that's why they did this is puzzling. in the soviet union white coat skins were delivered to first factories however hats made from white coats for weren't in

great demand they were died in two red green or black colors. green coats and adult seals faced a different fate their skins were used for clothing seal blubber was used for industrial purposes like the lighting in houses or as a lubricant. industrial scale hunting of harp seals that started in the u.s.s.r. in the one nine hundred twenty s. at its peak the yield reached nearly three hundred thousand seals in one season hunters had plenty of ammunition to spare. at the same time the first aerial survey of harp seals in the white sea was taken the total number was three million now the population has a trunk to one million. there is no huge demand for for fat in the

world now in spite of this fact seal hunting is still practiced in canada and norway their governments provide the hunting industry with financial support adult seals and gray coats are hunted nevertheless white coat hunting has been banned there for a long time already. in two thousand and nine a russia imposed a ban on the trade of white coats and gray grounds this meant that hard hunting came to an end completely changing individual adult seals in the. unprofitable before hand it was economically worthwhile as they could hunt in the areas of seal rookeries this idea is popular among the opponents of the ban on white coat in grey coat hunting and they are ready to return to the practice at any moment. belly at the book has this population lived with better life since hunting stopped i think its life hasn't changed a bit. why because basically it's the condition of the ice that regulates the birth

rate and now the part that man played in regulating the birth weight of the lives of these animals is being taken over by nature simply as a result of the environments intrinsic processes. according to one theory climate change is the culprit evidence for this is that the ice is thinning and the harp seal population has started to decline. judy when the seals were lying on the ice the ice was so thin that it began to sink under them into the water there was. around groove percy thousand pups. however there is more than one reason for the massive deaths man is actively invading the habitat of the harp seal. grill in the ropes raise the ramp. on the ropes raise around. every spring. it receives

reports on animal breeding grounds from the headquarters of the ice operations of our. alternate routes are then drawn on the nautical charts and they are adjusted along the way this is all done in order to avoid crushing the white coat. you cannot cover every area and see where they are exactly it's just that the majority of them are here but the rest are spread all over the the sea. situation is constant. and any time a change in course can occur even because of one seal you know it's a living being of course the way you feel especially stories since there just pops . out here preparing helicopter for winter conditions of a minus twenty five degrees celsius is a long and difficult process. a good pro to organize his expeditions to

the birthplace of the harp seal he has to find the first patch of ice to drop tourists on to. drive as well as the battery. be careful with. fear at the white see the past comes in contact with the present a modern eco settlement now neighbors at the small old houses of former hunters this settlement was created as an alternative for hunting the objective was to provide locals with the ability to earn a living through tourism. for the old timers on one side life is not easy even as snowmobiles have difficulty starting in these conditions. on the other side in the eco settlement you'll find environmentally friendly toilets a boiler house and even a quail farm. you can sit

in a city and guy is a tourist and a private pilot this is her fourth time here but these adventures don't come cheap here she can combine several interests like her love of the north and the chance to fly a helicopter in extreme conditions. i feel so embarrassed in the wild nature untouched by anybody. secondly for me it's the mystery of the press of the white coat there something. foamy in there. during this aerial i say expedition no seal rookeries were found protein sixteen the finds only one mother with her pup.

owns interesting since they set up a radio beacons to help the search for breeding grounds. for the. science technology innovation all the least of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. wealthy british style. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

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next. the majority of tourists visiting only the proteins at the base fly from. the airplane also brings up both food supplies and the post. the same. length

. of the fourteenth mencia to visit the ice fields of the white see and observe the seals has begun. with on google the situation is quite difficult this year. even though the ice is very good the seals a late the first flights will be sergei yes the doctor and the rest cure myself. and also we talked and discussed the issue of your coming with us. and there's a wish to see her first white coat in the wild has come true. god oh my goodness i've been waiting for this moment for many years and now i've seen this white coat with my own eyes but enough of course it's great when so many extremely positive emotions. one of the thoughts that i have had with that though is that i just can't understand why people would do this. hurt these animals.

harm seal hunting took place in the soviet union on a grander scale in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's for the most part it was helicopter seal hunting which was completely subsidized. after the collapse of the u.s.s.r. government subsidies ceased while the price of aircraft fuel made helicopters still hunting unprofitable. with the help of their norwegian neighbors hunters from both countries began to head into the sea to hunt from ships again this practice continued until the beginning of two thousand and nine.

the seals less than one year old are called grey coats and their skins have always been highly prized a special way of harvesting them originated in the u.s.s.r. live white coats were collected. next and taken on helicopters to special enclosures ecologists later called of these places concentration camps the seals were grown until they turned gray and were then clubbed to death at the same time they weren't fed because they had enough subdermal fat to last for two to three weeks. advocates of the renewal of hunting agree that hunting white coats only made sense in the state controlled economy but they are ready to return it to the practice of special enclosures if they believe that it's a very profitable. now that other seeds you should allow enclosures for white coats again to let them grow into adults and harvest the

seals accordingly as it was traditionally done these methods didn't appear out of nowhere during the soviet union the profitability was very well calculated so this method justifies itself among norway our closest partner is continuing perfectly well to hunt and sell cereals you can go to a shop in norway and see the price and you can estimate how much a person can earn by working in this sphere. however other european countries including russia have since two thousand and eleven rejected the import of any products made from the harp seal. the last mass slaughter of these animals took place in canada in two thousand and three to two thousand and five fulfilling of the entire quota allowed by the canadian government according to fishermen seals have sharply reduced of the car population. is a totally controversial issue there are interesting investigations conducted by biologists

that show that food chains are very complex that winston seals eat squid while squid live on young cod fish ski. boat. musicians and t.v. hosts. pictures of people climbing the baby seals cannot leave anyone unmoved just like killing children simply and bearable to watch and do nothing the arrival of celebrities didn't produce any enthusiasm from the local population their trade that existed for generations was now being outlawed. we have nothing else to live on don't take the last thing we have from us don't let our children start from

canada and skill up to three hundred thousand seals and while we get no more than twenty thousand five hundred thirty min there and put modern rifles in all these new helicopters don't exactly match well with the concept of tradition. you're guinea and a foreigner is a former hunter he tracked down white coats by helicopter for many years. after i was paired with the north. to get first i was pretty damn scared too well to hit them but i was already on the base there just like little babies they cry.

so scared he said i asked them alexei how do i hit him like this you come up to him and then whack when a new green pup was born you can't help but to feel sorry for him you take them under your arm and go and you can take him anywhere and only the devil knows how but his mother will find him but if you take a white coat under your arm it will bite into you had once. seal hunting. stood a whole working day and paid well. pay off your debts buy something for the house like some furniture we used to buy t.v. sets and refrigerators but now they tell us don't kill the white coats don't catch seals before we had fewer seals of a bear left and once and we had fish now that they banned seal slaughter seals go into the river and they can even crawl into the forest on the lakes white coats and females crawled on the coast before dogs chase them away now they don't even look

at them and the dog will lie on the ground in the seal will crawl right decided it's better to live like we used to before we caught seals and brought them to the slaughter house they should be hunted little by little. founded his settlement in order to provide jobs for those people who made a living through this trade in the past. i think the generation that lived by this trade bill like the people with the war syndrome. mental disorder just imagine there's an adult man that's capable of taking decisions who's strong willed who took upon some difficult expeditions to the arctic seeds and so on. who was monster of his own life. and this man was made and killed some and i want to repeat this he was forced he didn't do it himself he

was forced to kill children. in the eco settlement share helps keep the place functioning he lives in the neighboring village. he didn't to go see a hunting on the ice although he worked with the seal skins. he thinks that his present job and previous one can co-exist and so seal hunting should be resumed. on a small scale it can be resumed without harming the seals we don't need to kill them all and if some amount should be reduced or otherwise there will be no fish nothing. all. these villages belong to the soul of it ski ministry and they work for the monastery you know everyone works here an altar everything was abandoned.

so when no one gets unemployment benefits and that's enough for him. it's easy to start working but getting back to a regular work schedule that's very difficult. the bit. much you've got to get so the coolness of sixty five nineteen one one six zero three seven two and three and eight six seven. there's one seal lying there very close to here next to her there's another one of our heads are all in these crevices. everything here his changed so dramatically more ice ridges and there's practically no open water.

you think i'm your mother you know. with that cup is yellow it means he's very young when you first five days right yeah he's around five days old you can see that the placenta still there. not long ago you get the other one of was a certified as a first class able seaman now he goes fishing from more months but this job doesn't last of the whole year he can hardly wait for another voyage here in his home village there's no permanent work together with former hunter alexander you've got

a used to go hunting white coats. he would beat white coats with hooks pile them up and the helicopter would take them in a big net it would usually finish on the eighth of march. on the ninth we returned home like all forms of fishing in the north coastal fishing in the white sea has a seasonal character in march a small breed of cod it comes close to the shore. here's our catch. is there a hole in the net. sill bit through. you know missiles go through the hole and suck up the fish only the heads are left.

it's not important for the locals which breed of seal tour the net they are unhappy that now the seals have more rights than they do. you call it just insist that the biosphere is under great strain at the moment. the times when men could simply take from nature have come to an end. meanwhile artificially supporting the harp seal population to the same level is impossible. with harp seals a fertilized eggs implanted the uterus only after three months it means information takes place in march while the implantation takes place and the beginning of september when the embryo starts to develop it's not that easy to a pretty use this in a lab with. a leg protein brings the march expedition to

a close every tourist that landed on the ice receives a certificate confirming they met a white coat. it was amazing to see those little white coats because in fact they're just like us like we were when we were children. it's the same feeling their eyes are careful they look fat and they squeal they're really a lot like us. to be sure to do it today yeah i know that's a gift. of thought thank you maria no one the focus was the well done. this spring on the ice of the white sea you can not only see but hear the breathing of the white coat c.-o. pumps which are now free from being hunted. you

know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. download the official publication to your cell phone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites. if you're away from your television just doesn't

go out with your mobile device so you can watch artsy anytime anywhere. on. more news today violence is once again flared up. in these are the images cobol has been seeing from the streets of canada. the giant corporations are all today. modern day exit as christian communities in the greater middle east have been on the decline for the past century particularly over the last decade what accounts for this arab nationalism the advent of the arab spring or the logical outcome of western meddling and outside intervention.

i'm sam sachs in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. the n.r.a. already gun control using scare tactics and lies now looks it could do the same to a worldwide effort to clamp down on the global arms trade why is the gun lobby taking the side of genocidal war lords. in just a moment also yesterday monsanto said that it will no longer try to sell genetically modified seeds in the european union of other western nations can get it together when it comes to g.m. owes why can't the united states and last week federal prosecutors prosecutors announced that they were charging the website.