Animal rights groups, led by the Humane Society of the United States, continued their anti-hunt campaigns Friday by warning that global boycotts against Canadian seafood are taking hold and costing the nation both money and respect.

"People all around the world are boycotting Canadian seafood until the seal hunt is ended for good," music legend Paul McCartney said in a video message from London that was released in Charlottetown.

"Already that seafood boycott has cost Canada many times more than what the seal hunt brings in."

The former Beatle and his wife, Heather, appealed to the federal government to end the hunt by implementing a licence buy-back program for hunters.

Both industry and government officials have strongly denied that the boycott has had any impact on the Canadian seafood industry.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper quickly dismissed the McCartney's comments.

"Unfortunately, we're to some degree the victim of a bit of an international propaganda campaign," Harper said during a visit to Moncton, N.B.

Fed up sealers on the Iles de la Madeleine are trying to get their own boycott going, this one against hunt protesters.

Jean-Claude LaPierre, a veteran sealer on the Quebec islands, said hunters will be asking Atlantic businesses such as helicopter and airplane charters, restaurants and hotels to consider closing their doors to hunt protesters, beginning next year.

"We really want to protect our hunt and we believe other people in this region want to help us," LaPierre said in an interview.

"We're all Canadians. This way we can stand up for our rights."

Although LaPierre said the boycott of hunt protesters would begin in earnest next year, he said the major fuel supplier at the only airport on Iles de la Madeleine has already agreed not to refuel helicopters carrying hunt protesters.

However, that may not be a factor in this year's protest.

Members of the Humane Society of the United States, the organization that brought the McCartneys to the Gulf of St. Lawrence seal nursery earlier this month, left by boat from North Sydney, N.S., on Friday to be in place on the gulf ice when the hunt opens.

There is little or no ice in the southern gulf this year, so it appears the bulk of the hunt will be conducted more to the north, closer to Newfoundland and Labrador where most of the hunters are from.

At least 325,000 seals, most of them between two weeks and three months old, will be harvested in this year's hunt, 91,000 of them in the gulf hunt.