A beauty pageant winner from Canada's east coast says she will join this year's seal hunt after an anti-hunting group altered photos of her wearing sealskin.

Miss Newfoundland and Labrador, Sara Green, 19, says her jaw dropped when she saw the altered pictures on the internet.

Ms Green had worn a sealskin coat for her appearance in the Santa Claus parade in St John's.

But the altered photos showed her blood-spattered, surrounded by bloodied seal carcasses and holding a hakapik - a spiked club used for killing seals.

Ms Green says she will take advantage of the negative publicity.

She says she was raised in a family that goes seal hunting and she has a hunting licence and will join the hunt this year.

She says while animal rights groups might go after her, she grew up in Newfoundland and the seal hunt is something she believes in.