Gulf of St. Lawrence, off Prince Edward Island ? Sealers took to the thawing ice floes off the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, the first day of Canada’s contentious seal hunt, confronting animal rights activists who claim the annual cull is cruel.

Protesters dodged flying seal guts pitched at them by angry hunters on the first day of the spring leg of the world’s largest seal slaughter. Reporters and activists tried to get as close as permitted to the hunt on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but their presence infuriated sealers hunting for scarce animals on small, drifting ice pans.

At one point, a sealing vessel charged up to a small inflatable Zodiac boat carrying protesters, and a fisherman flung seal intestines at the observers.

“They threw carcasses at our Zodiac, and they came rushing at us in their boat and tried to capsize us in the wake,” Rebecca Aldworth, of the Humane Society, told The Associated Press. “This is standard behavior out here; the sealers feel that they’re completely above the law.”

The fishermen in the isolated island communities of Quebec and Newfoundland say the hunt supplements their meager winter incomes, particularly since cod stocks have dwindled dramatically during the past decade. They resent animal-rights activists, who they say have little understanding of their centuries-old traditions.

The hunt brought $14.5 million in revenue last year, after some 325,000 seals were slaughtered. Fishermen sell their pelts, mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil, earning about $60 per seal.

The federal government maintains Canada’s seal population is healthy and abundant, with a population of nearly 6 million in the Arctic north and maritime provinces.