Canada warned protestors on Friday not to push too far in their opposition to the country's annual seal hunt and vowed to do anything to ensure safety.
Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn pledged to "protect the sealers on the ice floes to make sure they can conduct a safe hunt."
He particularly cautioned a "Sea Shepherd Conservation Society" led by Paul Watson to watch their behavior.
"Sometimes I think they might want to test to see what our resolve is and, you know, whatever has to be done to ensure that (a safe hunt), that's exactly what we will do," he said.
Ottawa has set a quota of 275,000 animals in this year's hunt, up 5,000 from last year. The hunt opened Friday in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Watson, who has been campaigning against the seal hunt since the 1970s, took vessels to the hunting site in protest in past years, prompting the government to accuse him of being an extremist and threatening to prosecute him.
Canada announced last month that this year's seal hunt will be more humane, with sealers required to sever arteries under the animals' flippers to ensure the seals are dead before being skinned.
Source: Xinhua
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