Anti-seal hunt campaigners are using similar props to that 1980s campaign shot again, as they mobilise against a commercial hunt targeting thousands of harp seals in eastern Canada.

But advocates of hunting, a tradition for Canada's native peoples for years, argue that seals are not endangered -- numbers have exploded over the last 30 years -- and that the cull is a fast, humane way of controlling their numbers.

The hunt is also a vital source of income for local peoples, in a remote and often inhospitable environment where scratching out a living is hardly easy.

Anti-hunt activists have been out on the ice ever since the start of this year's hunt last week, snapping footage to use in their campaign.

The hunt, sanctioned by the Canadian government, is "the largest and cruelest slaughter of marine mammals anywhere in the world," says the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

"I watch a sealer club a seal and immediately turn to club another, and another, and another before he turns his attention back on the first seal so he can skin it," said activist Sherri Cox in a log on the fund website.

Images such as those helped swing global opinion against seal hunting in the 1980s, when protests led by star actress Brigitte Bardot led in 1987 to the banning of hunts against Greenland seals less than 12 days old.

Today, a new generation of stars has joined the battle led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton.

Organisations like the Humane Society and the Sea Shepherd Society are up in arms after Canada decided last year to raise a quota for hunters to nearly a million harp seals over three years.

In 2003, around 298,000 seals were killed, and 350,000 are expected to be killed this year," said Roger Simon, area director for Canada's ministry of fisheries and oceans, in the Madeleine islands, a Quebec archipelago.

The islands, in the Gulf of St Lawrence are the epicentre of the seal hunt, along with the east coast of Newfoundland.

Some 12,000 seal hunters wait for the perfect moment at the end of the winter when the ice melts to launch the cull.

For the short but intense hunt before the river warms up and gives the seals an escape route, some hunters can make more than 100,000 dollars a week (75,000 US).

Despite the anti-seal campaign, Simon says that seals are not endangered, arguing their population has risen from 1.8 million in 1970 to more than 5.2 million currently.

IFAW is challenging hunt advocates on their claim that the method of dispatching the seals is humane.

"One hunter started to skin a seal, but seeing that it was still moving, struck it again and again with his club," its said in a French language statement last week countering claims that one clinical blow kills the seals.

But Simon argued that such characterisations might not be accurate -- "the seal reacts like a chicken when you cut off its neck," he said.

"It seems to be trying to swim away but its brain is clinically dead and its heart is not beating anymore," he said.

According to Simon's Fisheries and Oceans Ministry, 98 percent of seals are killed in line with rules on cruelty free hunting.

But IFAW has presented ministers with videos which it says prove more than 660 violations of Canadian regulations on marine mammals.

"That's totally absurd," said Simon, pointing out that such videos are only admissible in court if they are not edited or modified in any way.

IFAW is also fighting to stem the trade in seal oil, which is rich in the fatty acid omega-3.

"It's great. I have been taking it for two years and my cholestrol levels are way down," Simon said.

Even tourism in this part of Canada is being drawn into the battle.

The Sea Shepherd Society has launched a campaign against businesses that take Japanese, Europeans and Americans on tours of the ice -- if they employ hunters.

"They are trying to stop me using some hunters as guides, these are my best men!" Jean-Yves Thériault, president of one tour firm said.

TERRA.WIRE