Heavy rain and high winds are causing problems during the opening day of this year's seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

One wooden fishing boat from Newfoundland started taking on water Tuesday morning, about four kilometres southeast of the Magdalen Islands.

A Coast Guard vessel moved in to rescue nine fishermen from their sinking 18-metre boat. No one was injured.

Lt.-Cmdr. Denise Laviolette, a navy spokeswoman in Halifax, says there are several coast guard vessels in the vicinity in case of trouble.

Sealers are beginning the hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the Magdalen Islands this week with more hunters descending on the ice floes off Newfoundland on April 12.

Fishermen are expected to kill more than 300,000 harp and hooded seals by the time this season ends on May 15, the last year for a three-year federal plan that allows sealers to harvest a total of 975,000 seals.

Rebecca Aldworth, director of Canadian wildlife issues at the U.S. Humane Society has been observing the hunt off the Magdalen Islands. Speaking from an ice floe via satellite phone, she told Canadian Press that sealers are breaking the rules by not making sure the animals are dead after they've been hit.

"We keep coming across seals that are conscious, bleeding to death and literally suffocating to death in their own blood,'' she said.

On Monday, Aldworth told Canada AM that the hunt is "inherently cruel," noting that 95 per cent of the pups killed are under just three months of age.

She says the pups are killed in brutal ways because hunters are under pressure to work quickly and because no one is supervising their methods.

"Sealers are paid per seal and they kill as many as they can and as quickly as they can. Humane considerations are the last thing you take into consideration," she said from Charlottetown.

"It's conducted over hundreds of miles of ocean with many small boats; it would be a practical impossibility to monitor this hunt. On top of that, I would question whether there is the will on the part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce the regulations protecting seals."

The Fisheries Department notes that changes to the seal hunt have been made since the 1970s when images of white baby seals being killed for their fur sparked outrage. In 1987, the hunting of harp seal pups younger than three weeks old, known as "whitecoats" and hooded seal pups known as "bluebacks" was made illegal.

The federal government also argues that seal hunting methods were studied by the Royal Commission on Sealing in Canada. The commission found that the clubbing of seals is at least as humane as, and often more humane than, the killing methods used in commercial slaughterhouses or abattoirs.

Ottawa also argues that the seal hunt boosts the economy of coastal towns and villages where few other economic opportunities exist. They note that with more than five million seals on the East Coast -- triple the number of three decades ago -- the hunt is sustainable.

Even seal hunters themselves say the hunt is necessary, arguing that seals and their voracious appetites for the decline in cod stocks.