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Seal cubs will be shot, clubbed and skinned for their fur as the world’s biggest commercial marine mammal slaughter begins.

Almost half a million helpless young seals , most which are aged just a few weeks old, could to be massacred in Canada despite mounting global outrage.

The Canadian government has authorised hunters to kill 468,000 seals for a second year running despite falling demand as countries ban the cruel trade.

The annual event officially opened on Sunday and the killing is expected to begin on Tuesdays as campaigners launch an operation to film it from a helicopter.

Monitors plan to document baby seals being shot and wounded as well as being impaled in the head to be clubbed to death on the deck of the sealers’ boats.

(Image: PA)

In order to avoid damage to the pelts seals can be killed with a ‘hakapik’ – a seal hunting tool which has a hammer head used to crush a seal’s skull, and a hook used to drag away the carcass.

The US, Russia and EU nations are among 35 countries to have banned the trade in seal products on ethical grounds amid claims cubs are sometimes skinned while still alive.

But Canada expects the only major remaining seal market - China - to pick up some of the slack this year.

It is almost five decades since the Daily Mirror’s 1968 front page featuring an iconic photograph by Kent Gavin which highlighted the reality of the bloody clubbings to a shocked world.

Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International in Canada, said: “This will be my 18th year observing the commercial seal hunt and it never gets any easier.

Read more:Seals secretly slaughtered

“But we bear witness to the suffering of these seals because our evidence is convincing nations the world over to stop trade in commercial seal products.

“HSI is now the only NGO documenting the killing and it is a role we take very seriously.

“If our cameras stop rolling the world won’t see what is happening to these baby seals and that is exactly what the sealing industry wants.”

The seals are mainly killed for their pelts but hunters also sell blubber, which is used to make ‘seal oil’ and sold as a health supplement. Seal penises are also sold to Asian markets as a popular ingredient in aphrodisiacs.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Despite the high quotas 38,000 seals were killed in 2015. This was down from more than 94,000 killed in 2013 and back to the levels killed in 2011 when 38,000 were killed.

The recent number of seals killed is a significant drop in numbers from the mid-to-late noughties with 218,000 harp seals killed in 2008, 355,000 in 2006 and a jaw-dropping 366,000 in 2004.

HSI claims previous monitoring of skinned seals by a team of independent veterinarians found evidence that up to 40% had skull injuries that were not sufficient to have caused death.