# Spraypainting baby seals? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2007, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393 "2007-01-02T06:45:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2007, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393/41 "2007-01-04T17:43:38Z")
[QUOTE=yabob] Surely, we can tell by which pole they choose to congregate around. [/QUOTE] That would be the North Pole. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2007, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393/42 "2007-01-04T17:52:27Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] [sub]y’know, sealed with a KISS… [/sub] [/QUOTE] So the painted ones have been signed, sealed and delivered…to the waiting maw of a polar bear. No Wonder. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2007, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393/43 "2007-01-05T00:57:22Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] So the painted ones have been signed, sealed and delivered…to the waiting maw of a polar bear. No Wonder. [/QUOTE] Well, I Want You to Let Me Know how the seals are Betrayed, since they have Nothin’ To Lose. It’s not like the bears are Snow Blind or something. [sub]Don’t You Let Me Down![/sub] ---
**Author:** ![sighforfunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@sighforfunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sighforfunk)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393/44 "2014-02-23T19:05:04Z")
I don’t know how silly rumors like this get started. The reality is less dramatic, but more deadly. The real truth is that Canadian Fisheries Biologists who followed up saw that the spray painted seal pups died of hypothermia after Greenpeace and the news reporters flew away in their helicopters. That was why Greenpeace stopped spraying baby seals. The spray paint was oil based, and did never dried in the below freezing temperatures. The oil destroyed the insulation value of the pup’s fur where it was sprayed on them. It is the same deal as a waterfowl with an oil spot the size of a quarter on its feathers being unable to stay warm enough to live. Patrick Moore then, an aparatchik with Greenpeace, later admitted that they knew that the seal population was never in danger from sealing. They just thought that people who don’t bother to do research would think that a likely story. The disappearance of winter sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence during recent years poses a much bigger, long term, risk to baby seals than the seal cull ever did. Pregnant seals don’t haul out onto the ice to give birth unless ice cover is at least 60% of the area and is at least 30 cm thick. In an ironic twist Canadian Prime Minister Harper boosted the annual seal cull quota, to show those pesky Europeans that they could not dictate seal fishery policy to Canada. That was the first year that most of the pups were born in the water and drowned. So it goes. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393/45 "2014-02-23T19:11:51Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > The paint just needs to be specially formulated to avoid these unpleasant side effects. Bombarding the paint with negatively charged particles causes no perceptible change to the human eye, but renders it invisible to most animals, including the predatory polar bears. > > Basically they end up perceived as “seal ions”. Seems like a pretty radical solution. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spraypainting-baby-seals/386393.md?page=2)