Plans for Seal Safaris Put Norway in a Dilemma

"The animal rights activists are giving the wrong image of what's happening," said Kurt Alan Hansen, a fish wholesaler in a blustery cove that opens to the North Sea. "People see this stuff of a man punching a seal and blood all over and they think Norwegians are crazy."

Things may get crazier -- and outrage more intense -- when gunshots start crackling through the fjords in January. New Norwegian wildlife regulations will for the first time permit tourists to hunt seals in an effort to cull a population that devours tons of valuable seafood and is prone to a disease known in these parts as the plague.

At least two adventure travel outfits are offering holiday packages to experienced and "rookie" hunters to shoot the much-loved pinniped amid these tiny islands speckling the cold sea. One company expects to make six figures from the seal safaris by catering to U.S. and European clients.

Environmental groups have protested on the Internet, and a prompt letter of rebuke was sent by Brigitte Bardot, the French actress and animal rights activist whom fishermen regard as more irritating than a boatload of tangled nets. "Do not accept hordes of bloodthirsty tourists visiting your country for the sole purpose of reaping the skin of these poor innocent and peaceful animals," she wrote to the Norwegian people.

Whaling and seal hunting have been common endeavors in this seafaring nation for generations. In recent years, however, fewer hunters have ventured along the coast and seal colonies are expected to multiply. Under lobbying by fishermen, the Norwegian Fisheries Ministry recently doubled the seal kill quota to 2,000 and persuaded parliament to invite "foreign hunters" in to pursue their prey with licensed guides.

Fisheries Minister Svein Ludvigsen first raised the idea of tourists shooting seals several years ago.

"I know that people in the travel industry are good at seeing possible ways of making money. This is one such possibility," he told a Norwegian trade publication. "Seal hunting in wild Norwegian coastal nature could be sold as an exclusive product to tourists