• Sign up to the ARCTIC mailing list and you could win a guest pass to ARCTIC's New Music West showcase in Vancouver on April 27! Two fans will be chosen at random to be put on the guestlist. All you have to do is be a member of the mailing list and be in British Columbia (make sure you set your home to BC).

  Go to the Talk page to sign up. The drawing will take place on April 20.

• Project Opus is giving away two passes - answer a few easy trivia questions about ARCTIC and you're that much closer to winning! Enter here before April 21.
• Listen to CiTR's "Live at Thunderbird Radio Hell" on Thursday, April 13 and Thursday, April 20 for a chance to phone in and win.

Canada's spring seal hunt is underway, with this year's limit raised to 335,000 seals. But this isn't a hunt for food - most of the animals are killed only for their pelts, and their skinned carcasses are dumped on the ice or in the water. Sealers are having a tough time finding markets for seal meat. Increased pressure from the international community as well as unwanted celebrity attention has added pressure on the Canadian government to stop the annual hunt; protestors argue that the hunt only benefits the fashion industry.

If you'd like the seal hunt to continue, you can help justify its existence by eating more seal meat! It's high in nutritious omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Here are some traditional recipes for seal brains and flippers.

...Lost your appetite? Tell the Canadian government you don't want them to subsidize the slaughter of wild seals.

Update May/09: Toxic mercury levels in seal meat linked to melting Arctic ice. Whoops! Maybe eating seal meat isn't such a great idea after all?

Update Mar/10: FYI, for those of you trying to buy seal meat, we don't sell it. Some confused old man tried to call our publicist last week to order some. What a genius. WE'RE A ROCK BAND, NOT A GROCERY STORE. I guess there wasn't quite enough dripping sarcasm in our original post to make our position clear?

We're starting the spring with three Vancouver shows:

April 8: The Media Club (full band)
April 22: The Media Club (solo)
April 27: NewMusicWest festival showcase, The Marine Club (full band)

Full details are available on the Events page.

• ARCTIC was recently featured on NPR's "Open Mic", a showcase for independent musicians.
• Canadian podcast All Axis Radio featured ARCTIC for an entire episode, including a phone interview and four songs. Listen here.

After a mere three months' reprieve - and alongside the worst oil spill in Alaska's history - the topic of Arctic drilling has been opened yet again. Republicans have now linked the issue to Gulf Coast restorations in a recent budget bill, hoping to lure Democrats to their side by promising that oil funds will be used to restore the coasts and levees. The only Democrat to support the resolution was Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. The motion passed, barely, 51-49, and the bill now moves on to the House.

You can take action to help prevent even more disastrous drilling by visiting Defenders of Wildlife's Arctic Refuge site and adding your name to the petition, or contacting your senator directly and asking them not to let this happen.