The seal hunt in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence officially opened Tuesday morning.

The harvest further north and off the northeast coast of Newfoundland in the area known as ‘the front’ begins Thursday.

The provincial government is lending up to $3.6 million to a company buy seals from fishermen to ensure there is a hunt this season. The money will allow Carino Processing Limited to purchase seal pelts and blubber or fat.

Members of animal-rights groups say they be on the ice with a camera crew to videotape during the hunt.

“We’ll be there … based on the past, yes, we expect to see examples of inhumane killing,” said Sheryl Fink of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

She said the IFAW expects a significant portion of the allowable catch, set at 400,000 animals, to be taken this year. Despite that she said the IFAW believe the end of the seal hunt is just a matter of time.

Some people in the fur industry disagree. “Domestic markets have never been stronger,” said Rob Cahill of the Canadian Fur Institute.

He said fur sales are not as poor as international headlines about politically driven bans on seal products might suggest.

“The product remains in demand,” he said.

Sealers are expected to receive $ 27 per animal – significantly better than the $15 per animal they received in 2010, but still a fraction of the $100 dollars per seal they were paid a few years ago.

Research by the federal Fisheries Department has found that the harp seal population of Atlantic Canada is at between eight and nine million animals. A 2004 assessment of seal stocks estimated the harp seal population in the area at between 4.6 and 7.2 million.

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• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Seal hunters use a hakapik, a club used for killing seals, to kill a seal near their boat in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence March 31, 2008 near Charlottetown, Canada. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Seal hunters skin harp seals on an ice floe March 30, 2001 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  The bodies of harp seals, roughly twenty days old, lie on an ice floe March 27, 2001 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  The carcass of a harp seal, roughly twenty days old, lies on an ice floe March 30, 2001 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  The carcass of a harp seal, roughly twenty days old, lies on an ice floe March 30, 2001 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  The carcass of a harp seal, roughly twenty days old, lies on an ice floe March 30, 2001 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Seal hunters carry dead seals in their boat in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence March 31, 2008 near Charlottetown, Canada. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  A policeman tries to remove female animal-rights activist Ashley Fruno (R), covered with a body-painting to look like the Canadian flag, during her one-woman anti-sealing protest by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) outside the Canadian embassy in Tokyo on March 24, 2010. (TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Animal rights activists, Sir Paul McCartney(R) and then-wife Heather Mills McCartney get up close to a seal pup during a venture onto the ice floes of the Gulf of St-Lawrence before the start of the 2006 seal hunting season in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. (DAVID BOILY/AFP/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Members of the organization for the defense of animals AnimalNaturalis protest naked and painted as bloody seals to protest the seal hunt in Canada on March 15, 2010. (Getty)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Members of the organization for the defense of animals AnimalNaturalis protest naked and painted as bloody seals to protest against the seal hunt in Canada on March 15, 2010. (Getty)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Inuit hunter Pitseolak Alainga (L) explains how the Inuit traditionally hunt seal to Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty outside the Nunavut Legislature in Iqaluit, Canada, February 6, 2010. (GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  An animal-rights activist holds a baseball bat as he stands next to a person wearing a seal costume during a protest against the killing of seals in Canada on March 29, 2010 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  An animal-rights activist wears a mask depicting the face of a seal during a protest against the killing of seals in Canada on March 29, 2010 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  People protest in front of the Canadian Consulates, on March 25, 2009 in Nice, south eastern France, to protest against the seal hunt in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in Canada. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  Having recently returned from a trip out to the ice floes to collect seal heart valves for scientific research, local butcher and seal hunter, Rejean Vigneau (R) and AN employee (L) prepare seal meat in his meat shop on March 25, 2008 in the Magdalen Islands of Quebec, Canada. (DAVID BOILY/AFP/Getty Images)

• Canadian Seal Hunt

  The Grim Reaper clubs a mock seal to death during a protest by the animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animlas) in Hong Kong, 21 April 2006. (MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images)