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The Canadian government has come under scrutiny for upping their 2015 quota and giving hunters permission to slaughter around 470,000 seals as part of the biggest marine hunt on the planet, Sputnik reported.

During Canada’s annual seal hunt, hunters strike the animals with clubs or stab them with hakapiks, tools used to crush their skulls and drag their bodies away. They then skin them and sell their pelts, blubber for “seal oil,” and penises to be used as aphrodisiacs.

While many government officials and hunters find nothing wrong with killing such a large number of animals, advocates say their method is inhumane.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, up to 40% of the dead seals had skull injuries that were not sufficient to have caused the death, suggesting that the animals suffered prior to death.

Adult seals have to be shot to be killed, but shooting risks destroying their pelts. So hunters have turned their weapons on younger specimens: three-week to three-month old seals, which make up the vast majority of the animals killed.

This year, the Canadian government increased the seal hunting quota, from 400,000 in 2014 to 470,000 this hunting season.

The United States, the EU, Taiwan, Switzerland, Mexico and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia have all stopped their trade in some or all products that originate with commercial seal hunts.