A change in wind direction has finally allowed ice-breakers from the Canadian Coast Guard to free many of the ships of seal hunters that had been trapped in pack ice off the Newfoundland coast for a week, The Globe and Mail reported TuesdaySt John’s/New York (EON) - A change in wind direction has finally allowed ice-breakers from the Canadian Coast Guard to free many of the ships of seal hunters that had been trapped in pack ice off the Newfoundland coast for a week, The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

Some 300 sealers were still trapped in the pack ice, the Canadian newspaper reported, but coast-guard officials expected to free the remaining 60 trapped ships by the weekend if the south-westerly winds stayed with them.

“Mother Nature has started to co-operate with us a little,” Captain Brian Penney of the St John’s Coast Guard told reporters.

“We are starting to get a reduction in the total number (of vessels) that are out there, the ice field is starting to move,” Penney said, referring to the wind that was slowly pushing the ice off the coast and out into the open ocean.

Some of the seal hunters, who were suddenly caught in a powerful north-easterly storm, have been trapped in the ice for two weeks.

Some have now run out of fuel, and others have for days now had to reduce their water and food supplies to emergency rations.

At least 10 of the hunting vessels had sustained “significant damage” in the ice, Penney said.

One Canadian woman told the newspaper how her four sons and three grandsons had returned from the ice at the weekend a few pounds lighter.

Apart from worrying about the ship and their supplies, they were mostly bored, Margaret Burden of Port Hope Simpson in southern Labrador told the newspaper.

“They made a huge snowman and put a (sealer’s) suit on him and left him on the ice floes,” Burden told the newspaper.

The hunters said it was the worst weather conditions they had encountered in 20 years.

Just over a week ago, more than 100 ships were trapped in the pack ice. At one time, there were up to 600 sailors stuck in the ice floes.

The annual seal hunt takes place between mid-March and mid-April in the Gulf of St Lawrence off the Newfoundland coast.

The cull is met by massive international protests by animal-rights activists, but the snow-white seal-cub skins are still highly prized in Russia and China.

The Canadian government gave permits to 270,000 sealers to take part in 2007’s cull.

Animal-rights activists accuse some hunters of tearing the skins off live cubs.