Seals, Stigma and Survival have strived to include seal hunters from across the Nordic region and parts of Northeastern Canada. One individual interviewed is Jouni Heinikoski, a seal hunter and former fisher from Northern Finland.
An interview with Heinikoski was conducted by PI Danita Burke in 2025. While information from the 2025 interview is pending, we would like to use this opportunity to highlight Heinikoski’s 2024 interview with the CBC Radio program The Broadcast on January 11th, 2024.
Much like his interview for Seals, Stigma and Survival in his interview for CBC, Heinikoski highlights the impact of the European ban on the trade in seal products. In particular, Heinikoski speaks about the knock-on consequences of the seal ban and the stigma on seal hunting for fish species and fishers in the Baltic Sea region, and the negative reframing of seals from a valuable resource to a pest.
You can access Heinikoski’s interview on The Broadcast via the CBC website (https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-122-the-broadcast/clip/16034779-we-visit-seaweed-nursery-meet-sealer-finland)
Seals, Stigma and Survival 