[LINK] "The last seal meat truck in St. John’s"

[rfmcdonald]

Edward Riche of MacLean's reports on a declining culinary tradition in Newfoundland and the people who sustain it.

In the spring, the weather on the Avalon Peninsula turns mauzy. Unremitting fog, of the sort to drive people mad, cloaks the land. A 2008 Chevy Silverado pickup parks on the apron of the St. John’s waterfront, the driver puts out a sign reading “Fresh flippers” and the word is, literally, on the street. Those with a hunger have been anticipating its arrival, and sales commence in short order. The Taylors have been selling seal meat (and at other times of the year halibut, whole cod and fillet) out of the back of a truck here for more than 40 years.

This morning Heidi Taylor, in her 20th year purveying harbourside, sells out in little more than an hour. “There’s not so much demand for the pelts this year,” she explains, “and the sealers won’t kill an animal for its meat alone.” The harvesters, or swilers, are either landsmen, small-boat fishermen from the many fishing communities along Newfoundland’s northeast coast, or teams aboard longliners—fishing vessels anywhere between 10 and 20 m in length, capable of going further offshore (though still within the parameters of the 100-mile diet). They travel to the leading edge of the pack ice, a field of slowly thawing sea ice 15 times the size of Prince Edward Island, strewn with more than a million harp and hood seals. For Taylor, this year’s stock is coming exclusively from the longliners.

Scarcity of supply (not of resource: the population of seals has been exploding ever since the large-scale commercial hunt ended in the 1970s) has driven up the price: cleaned flippers are $5 each this year. They’ve never been so dear. In times, prices have been half that.

The appetite for seal is undiminished in Heidi’s two decades selling them. When her family business has access to enough product, they can move between 15,000-20,000 flippers a season. That’s a lot of meat pie. Having been at it this long, Heidi knows many of the returning customers well—not, she says, by name, “but by their stories.” It’s a ritual seasonal delicacy for Taylor’s older clients. “Younger ones,” says Heidi, “are eating it because it’s so healthy.”