TORONTO (AP) - Canada's fisheries minister said on Friday that he has banned five animal rights activists from observing the hotly debated seal hunt off the Atlantic Ocean while they are under investigation for allegedly trying to disrupt the annual harvest.

The activists countered that they had been threatened and abused by sealers during the hunt, which began last weekend, and called the indefinite ban against them an injustice meant to hide the cruel realities of the hunt from the public.

Fisheries and Oceans Minister Loyola Hearn said the government would not distribute permits to anyone who might jeopardize the safety of the hunt by confronting the sealers.

“If you step over that line and try to interfere in any way with the hunt, then you can be arrested and charged, as people were last week,” Hearn told reporters in St. Johns, Newfoundland.

The activists, whose observer permits were revoked after their arrests last Sunday, are members of the Humane Society of the United States. Steve Outhouse, a spokesman for Hearn, said the activists got too close to sealers on an ice floe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Observers of the hunt - typically activists and journalists - must remain at least 30 feet from the fishermen, who kill the seal pups with ice picks or a bullet to the brain.

“While they're under investigation, they won't be allowed to go back out,” Outhouse said. “If there are no charges laid, that would presumably mean that they are innocent and can reapply again for permits.”