"Opinionatedly Yours"
#8: December 4, 1997
Seal Slaughtering in the Northwest Atlantic
It's Not Over and It's Worse Than Ever -- A Brief History
By Barry Kent MacKay

It is just so damned frustrating. Perhaps it's because it was once such a major issue among those of us who care so much for animals, and now it seems few people know. Or maybe the frustration derives from the fact that we had won so much, and now it is worse than ever.

I refer to the seal hunt. That is what we called it, generically, by which it was understood within the animal protection movement that we meant the slaughter of harp and hooded seal pups by commercial fishermen in the Northwest Atlantic, off Canada's east coast. The slaughter took place on the ice-floe whelping grounds of the seals, late each winter, just as the seals were giving birth. The baby harp seals, with their large eyes and their coats of snow-white fur, were tremendously appealing, innocent, and helpless little animals. The brutality visited upon them was in stark contrast both to their innocence and to the purity of their wilderness environment.

Images of these pups bashed over the heads, skinned as they still struggled and the red blood on the white ice, the same red and white colors of the Canadian flag, became rallying calls to humanitarians the world over. Seal hunt proponents have suggested, with some justification, that the seal hunt was the single biggest money-raiser of any animal protection issue ever known. Certainly organizations like the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Greenpeace, the Sea Shepherd Society, the Fund for Animals and yes, we here at the Animal Protection Institute, all were involved in campaigns against the killing of seals. The image of the newly born harp seal, called a "whitecoat," became a fund-raising icon within the animal protection community. Although Greenpeace has dropped out of that group, I think it safe to say that the remaining organizations, and other animal protection groups, still oppose the commercial seal hunt. In fact, although the name "Greenpeace" came to symbolize the anti-seal hunt movement in the minds of much of the Canadian public and with the media, the organization didn't take a position against the hunt until 1976.

Presently, even within the animal rights and animal welfare communities, awareness of the sheer magnitude of cruelty involved in the present seal hunt remains relatively low. Interests of humanitarians are spread over a broader spectrum of concerns than was true when the anti-seal hunt movement was most active, some two decades ago.

One of the things I hear most often is that the hunt has stopped. "I thought it was illegal to kill baby seals" is a frequently heard reply to concerns about the current situation. It is a reaction not uncommon even within the animal protection movement.

The hunt never did end, and now it is bigger, in terms of animals involved, and more cruel than ever before.

The seal hunt is a complex issue, and this is the first in several columns I will be doing to help people understand more about it. I know, however, that many activists are not interested in details; obviously the hunt (and even that word, "hunt," is a misnomer) violates our most fundamental values. There is no question that if the magnitude of cruelty involved were understood it would again be a significant focus of our movement. Those of you who don't care about the details, or the background, might want to simply go to the section marked And Now? It will tell you what the present situation is and a little of what is being done about it. Those of you who also want to know a bit about the seal hunt protest movement, but don't want to wade through a summary of the preceding history of the actual hunt are invited to go directly the section marked The Animal Protection Movement to the (Temporary) Rescue.

For Those Who Are Interested ...

Personally, I think it is important to know why this barbarism occurs; why we object to it; why it is so difficult to stop it; why it has so much support from the Canadian Government and what are the answers to rationales mounted by seal hunt supporters. I think understanding such things is a material part of the struggle to end it. As long as there are seals and sea lions, people will kill them for reasons we will explore in a future column, but it is the commercially driven hunt that does by far the greatest damage.

The Seal Populations

The harp seal whelps (gives birth) to a single pup. This process happens in large assemblies, called "patches" by sealers. One place where this happens is on the ice in the White Sea, off the cost of the Soviet Union. Another whelping site is called the "West Ice," located between Iceland and Spitsbergen. These two groups breed at somewhat different times, and it is generally thought that they are two discreet populations with very little mixing. They, too, are subjected to hunts but garner less attention than the Canadian hunt, which in recent time included both Norwegian sealers and Norwegian-funded seal product processing.

On this side of the Atlantic, there is only one population that utilizes two large breeding areas. One is off the northern coast of Newfoundland and is called "the front." The other is in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, north of Prince Edward Island, near the Magdalen Islands. This is the "Gulf" herd.

Based on the time of breeding, the harp seal is divided into two Old World and one New World population, with the latter split into two groups: the Front (animals who breed off the northeast coast of Newfoundland) and the Gulf (animals who breed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence). Non-breeding animals range widely over the northern reaches of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, including Hudson Bay.

A second, much less common species, the hooded seal, is also involved in what is collectively known "the seal hunt." Hoodeds tend to whelp individually or in small groups, and don't form the large "patches" characteristic of the harp seal. One major whelping ground, in Davis Strait, between Greenland and Canada, is too remote to interest the commercial sealers. Other whelping sites include the area off the east coast of Greenland. Like the harp seals, hoodeds whelp on ice at the Front and in the Gulf.

The land adjoining the range of the harp seal is mostly rugged northern country. It is cold, bleak and harsh of climate, much of it frozen for most of the year. Tundra, rock, and stunted spruce forests and bogs dot the land. In the short summer season the harps range up even above the Arctic Circle.

History of the Hunt

Europeans first came to the region about 2,000 years ago. Last year I visited the site of one of their colonies, L'anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. A handful of artifacts painstakingly extracted from the surrounding peatbogs is all that is left to tell us the Norsemen once lived there. The community was at the edge of a protected cove fed by a stream of clear, fresh water, amid rocks rich with copper ore the Norse could mine for their exquisitely wrought tools and weapons. But the Archaic Indians were there, on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, at least as far back as 4,000 years ago, possibly earlier. They preceded the Dorset Eskimos, who depended heavily on seals, fish, and seabirds for sustenance.

The aboriginal hunt would not have been particularly humane and at times would have involved great risks to the seal hunters. However, there was an unimaginable abundance of wildlife, including the walrus, long extirpated from the region, caribou, sea birds, whales, and vast numbers of fish. The native people would have been responsible for the death of relatively small numbers from the huge populations of wildlife living in the region.

It was that immense abundance of wildlife that attracted more Europeans, centuries after the Norse, having gained a toehold on the edge of the New World, left. These newcomers from the east were seafaring Europeans who were willing to face profoundly harsh conditions and great dangers. The lure was the potential wealth the northwest Atlantic's huge populations of wildlife represented in the European marketplace.

In those days there were walruses in the region. The great, lumbering animals, with their habit of coming ashore, were dangerous prey for the aboriginal hunters. But they fell easy victims to the Europeans' gunfire. Ivory tusks were of value, along with the oil that could be boiled from walrus blubber. Their thick skins made tough leather suitable for specialized use. The walrus had vanished from the north shore of the Gulf by 1704. In 1800 the last sighting of the walrus was made off the Magdalen Islands. It was, however, 187 years later that the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada finally declared the walrus extirpated.

Gray and harbor seals abounded in those days and were also subjected to greedy exploitation. In the late 18th century the gray was subject of a major sealing industry in the Magdalens, low lying islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Less than a hundred years later there were not enough gray seals remaining to sustain the hunt. By World War II biologists assumed the gray seal was gone from Canadian waters. There were some left, and the species is staging a comeback, leading to calls for a cull.

The much smaller harbor seal was once more abundant and more widely distributed. There was even a small population in the fresh waters of Lake Ontario. The last representative of that population was killed in 1824. The species now has a reduced range and exists at significantly less than its former numbers. Harbor seals are too small and their numbers too scattered to be the focus of a major commercial hunt, although they've always been killed for domestic use, or out of spite as competitors for fish.

Walruses, sea lions, fur seals, elephant seals, monk seals, the four genera of Antarctic seals, and the ten species of northern true seals, also known as hair seals, are all grouped as pinnipeds. Of the pinnipeds found in the northwest Atlantic, the walrus, gray seals and harbor seals were the ones most often killed by the earliest Europeans to visit what is now Canada. They were the species found in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and off New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, during the ice-free summer months.

The harp and the hooded seals were usually missed by seal hunters because they normally give birth on ice floes far from shore, and always during the cold, ice-bound months of late winter and very early spring. After whelping season they would scatter widely throughout the far north. In Canadian waters the harp seal whelps from late February until about mid-March. Hooded seals whelp synchronously, during the second half of March. Although hooded seals have, under exceptional circumstances, been known to give birth on shore, or to wander far from normal areas of distribution, both species are referred to as "ice seals" for their habit of whelping on pack ice. Together the harps and hoodeds outnumber the populations of all other pinniped species of North America.

By about 1500 the Norse settlements, which would have known about the breeding ice seals of late winter, were abandoned. In the latter part of the 16th century, the harp seal whelping grounds were discovered by intrepid Basque sailors hunting whales, walruses, seals, fish, and seabirds in the dark, cold waters off Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

I have been to the ruins of the 17th century Basque whaling station at Red Bay, Labrador. This famous archeological site is located on an island in a protected bay surrounded by bleak rock and tundra. Although it was August when I went there, snow flurries had occurred earlier in the week, and the wind was raw and cold. Numerous old graves discovered by archeologists attested to the hostility of the environment those many years ago, in the absence of the life-sustaining trappings of civilization we so take for granted. It is hard for us to imagine the fortitude that would have been required to survive such a remote setting so long ago. It was the lure of the money to be made through the exploitation of local wildlife that led men to those lonely graves, and resulted in the ruthless slaughter of any animals whose deaths could lead to profit for those who were tough enough and lucky enough to survive.

France began to establish permanent settlements in the region. By the mid-17th century, French settlers hunted pre-whelping harp seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, during the winter. At first the seals were simply shot from small boats that could be rowed through leads or manually pushed over the top of floating ice. This was not a particularly efficient means of acquiring profitable amounts of seal oil, skins, or meat. Copying the local Inuit method of catching seals, the French settlers made stout nets, fashioned from sealskin, to capture and drown the animals.

This industry became so profitable that settlements called "seigneuries" were established along the North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to take advantage of the net "fishery" for seals. By 1689 other seigneuries were established in Newfoundland. Some of these communities exist to this day, and the people who live there still kill seals in an unbroken family tradition lasting more than three centuries. Such folks don't take kindly to animal rights advocates from far places telling them what they can or cannot do.

The aboriginal Inuit could not compete with the settlers with their advanced technology and access to foreign markets. By 1720 the Inuit were gone from the North Shore, while the commercial fishery, primarily using nets to drown the seals, expanded throughout the region.

By the mid-18th century, New France exported about 500 tons of seal oil each year. It has been estimated that it would take at least 6,000 adult seals to produce such a quantity of oil. This was far more than the Inuit had killed for local subsistence use, but only a frail shadow of the horrors to come. The net fishery for seals was a progenitor for the bigger commercial hunts that accompanied the arrival of the industrial revolution.

By the time the net fishery had reached its full potential, settlers from Britain who had settled French-claimed land on Newfoundland had begun their own seal-killing endeavors. In summer the main source of income was northern cod. In winter it was seals. The Church of Newfoundland pragmatically declared seals to be fish (even though they are, of course, mammals) which thus allowed pious Newfoundlanders to consume seal on Fridays, or during lent. The term "fishery" endures to this day, and seal hunting is administered by the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

At first the English primarily used nets to catch seals. They refined their techniques and developed traps the seals could be herded into, to be subsequently drowned. Actually there is evidence that seals and some other aquatic mammals don't actually drown, but die of suffocation as their bodies have evolved to resist breathing when submerged, even past the point of unconsciousness due to lack of oxygen to the brain. We land mammals, on the other hand, will start breathing before suffocation occurs, whether we are above or below the water's surface and whether we are conscious or unconscious. Which form of death is the more cruel becomes a moot point; neither could be called "humane" by any reasonable definition of the word.

The "Modern" Hunt

There are still some net fisheries in place, although mostly this fishery has been replaced by yet more "efficient" means of wholesale slaughter. Sometimes the ice conditions bring whelping patches close to shore. At such times it is a relatively simple matter to simply walk out onto the ice and kill the seals.

Whitecoats could be killed with clubs, or with hakapiks. The hakapik was probably first used by Norwegians as the tool of choice for killing seals. It is a wooden pole, up to five feet in length, with a slightly curved iron spike on the far end. It was invented for use in walking on floating pack ice. It could be used to probe for treacherous holes covered by snow or thin ice. If a sealer fell in, the sharp hook could save his life by giving him the means to secure a hold on the ice and pull himself out. The hook, if driven into the skull of a baby seal, could be lethal. The blunt end could be used to club the seal, and then the hook used to drag the bleeding, twitching carcass to where it could be skinned. Gaffs, which are very similar, could also be used. Bats and clubs were used as well. Adult seals, who could escape the hakapik, gaff, or club, were still shot.

The white fur that gives the whitecoat its name is actually the lanugo, or fetal hair, which most mammals shed while still in the womb or in the uterus (in humans it is very fine and can be seen on premature babies). In the harp seal the lanugo is a well developed pelt that is initially stained yellow by amniotic fluid and changes to white, usually in one to three days. The very young harp is sometimes called a yellowcoat. Just after the yellow is gone it is called a "thin whitecoat." A few days later, much fatter and rounded by a rich diet of mother's milk, the animal is known as a "fat whitecoat." The appealing image of the fat whitecoat is known worldwide, thanks to the animal protection movement.

Throughout most of the history of the hunt whitecoats have been killed for oil, as were adults, young of the year, and immature animals. Young of the year are called "beaters" while immature harp seals are called "bedlamers." It takes several years for the animals to reach sexual maturity, and to develop the dark "harp-shaped" marking on the back that gives the species its common name, "harp seal." Animals molting from the white lanugo to the silvery pelt of the beater are called "ragged-jackets." The molt happens at about two weeks of age.

But the 1740s large quantities of seal oil were being shipped back to Britain. The oil, like that obtained from whales and seabirds, was useful in the pre-electrical era as fuel for lamps, as well as a lubricant and as cooking oil. It was used in manufacture of soaps and some foods. It's been estimated that between 1723 and 1795 between 7,000 and 128,000 seals were killed for the overseas market. It was a substantial number, but still only a relative drop in the statistical bucket and only a hint of the terrible events that were to come.

Then as now, the number of seals killed in a given season depended in large degree on local weather and ice conditions. Things were worse for the seals when the ice drifted in close to shore and the whelping patches were easily accessible from land. In 1773 about 128,000 seals, including about 50,000 whitecoats, were slaughtered.

By the latter half of the 18th century, relatively small schooners with decks were used to ferry men out to the whelping patches. These boats did not stay out long and such sealers were and still are known as "landsmen."

By the beginning of the 19th century there was a significant change. Now larger vessels with increased cargo-carrying capacity took men out for days or weeks at a time. When whelping patches were found the men would go over the sides, onto the ice, and commence killing. This was always at a time when the traditional fisheries were idle and the seals represented employment when, for many fishermen, no other means to earn money existed. The hulls of the fishing vessels were reinforced to be able to sail in ice-filled waters. This schooner hunt eventually surpassed the landsmen's hunt in the number of seals killed.

It was dangerous work, with many ships crushed in ice and many men dying in the frigid waters or freezing to death out on the ice floes, where weather could be treacherous.

Undeterred by the loss of about 400 vessels and about 1,000 men in the first 65 years of the 19th century, sealing was pursued by ever larger, stronger ships destroying ever greater numbers of seals. In 1818 the kill exceeded 200,000 seals for the first time, and the "golden age" of modern commercial sealing had begun, mostly using ships off Newfoundland, and landsmen working the ice off the shores of the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A cruelly disposed American, Colonel Richard Gridley, also known as the "Boston Tyrant," had won deed to the Magdalen Islands from King George III in 1763. It was Gridley who orchestrated the complete annihilation of the walruses who used to reside in the Magdalens, pocketing his profits and leaving when the species had been wiped out. His departure was seen as a blessing by the Acadians who remained behind to fish and hunt seals and other wildlife and to farm. One grim source of income was the booty retrieved from the numerous shipwrecks that occurred in the treacherous waters surrounding the Magdalens.

Staggering Numbers as the Seas Run Red with Blood

With the input of significant capital invested to generate huge profits, the seal hunt reached staggering proportions. In 1832, for example, approximately 740,000 seals were killed. The estimated annual average number of seals killed from 1818 to 1862 was more than 400,000. Indeed even that figure is probably a significant underestimate as it fails to take into account numbers of animals that were probably killed but never landed. Seals wounded by gunfire might escape, or simply sink under the ice. Sometimes mounds of seal pelts stacked on ice would be lost when snow squalls hid them from view or shifting winds and currents carried the cache away. The pelts, with the oil-rich blubber still attached, were called "sculps." It was still the oil, not the snow-white fur of the whitecoats, much less the penis of the adult male, that was the marketable product to be derived from this massive slaughter.

The commercial seal hunt reached its destructive peak in 1857. That year more than 370 ships took approximately 13,600 men out to kill more than 500,000 seals. A similarly large slaughter occurred the following year. Then the inevitable happened; the seals began to decline. In 1862, the take was 268,624 seals. In 1876 the annual kill exceeded 500,000 seals for the last time, at least until now!

In 1862 technology brought steam-powered former whaling vessels to the hunt. With far greater maneuverability than the masted sailing vessels, there was no looking back. Early returns were small, due mainly to weather conditions unfavorable for sealing. However, in 1865 the three wooden-hulled steamers that were the beginning of the steam-driven sealing fleet hit pay dirt, landing more than 19,000 seals.

With steam increasingly replacing sail, investors were compelled to make significant capital outlays in hopes of returning satisfactory profits. That meant little concern for either seals or sealers. The sealers, the men who took the risks, were often little more than indentured laborers forced to work under appalling conditions.

By the 1880s there simply weren't the numbers of seals remembered from earlier decades. Both competition and cost-cutting by ship owners and financial backers intensified. Sealers lived in squalor aboard the sealing vessels. Safety regulations were simply non-existent. Sealers even had to pay a "berth fee" to be allowed to undertake an ordeal that would return them little, if any, income.

And yet the seal hunt became something of a traditional initiation rite of appeal to strong young men willing to test their mettle and experience for themselves the act of sealing; an act that was profoundly a tradition of their culture. As well it was still a hope of earning income when none other was available. When a major whelping ground was found sealers would say they were "in the fat" as the slaughter commenced. No seal older than a thin whitecoat that could be reached was spared.

It has been estimated that during the 19th century the commercial seal hunt accounted for the deaths of no less than 33 million seals! Of 50 wooden-hulled steamers in the seal fishery between 1863 and 1895, 72% were lost at sea.

Men of Flesh, Ships of Steel

The current era, with steel-hulled ships, began in 1906. There was, in 1914, a human tragedy of such magnitude that it has become symbolic, to me, of the sheer power of greed and the ruthless nature of men who could commit to such atrocities in the interest of profit.

That was the year that the S.S. Newfoundland, a steel-hulled, steam-driven sealing vessel with a crew of 189 men, captained by Westbury Kean, became jammed in ice some distance from the seals. Kean ordered his men overboard, onto the ice, so they could walk to the S.S. Stephano, a sister ship captained by Kean's father, Abram Kean, renowned as "the greatest sealer of all times."

Weather turned nasty and 34 men returned to the Newfoundland. The others reached the Stephano, where they had lunch. Abram Kean then ordered them over the side, to hunt seals even though weather conditions were rapidly deteriorating. In those days captains' orders were not to be questioned and the men, many no doubt with well-justified apprehension, did as directed. They were told to kill seals and then return to the Newfoundland.

As the blizzard raged Abram Kean assumed the men made it safely to his son's ship, while his son assumed they were safely aboard the Stephano. This confusion would have been avoided had the ships, like many others in the fleet, carried radios, but the owners had deemed radios to be an expensive luxury whose purchase would cut too deeply into profits. And so the men were lost on the ice for two nights and a day, with temperatures sometimes plunging as low as minus 30 degrees F. When a third ship, the S.S. Bellaventure, stumbled upon them, 77 were dead or missing. Another died later in hospital and several of the survivors lost limbs to frostbite.

Some died standing, frozen like macabre statues. Some went insane and walked off the edge of the ice into the sea. One man was found, dead and frozen, with his arms wrapped around the frozen bodies of his two sons. Sealing always has been a family affair.

By the end of 1914, no less that 253 men and 234,000 seals were lost as a result of this ghastly industry.

As a grim footnote to this ugly blight on the history of a vile business, at the age of 79, having spent 67 seasons hunting seals, Abram Kean landed his millionth seal pelt. In response to this never-to-be-equaled labor, Kean was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1934.

Although the First World War put a dent in the industry, as a direct result of the war the value of seal oil increased. After the war, prices for seal oil again subsided, leaving little incentive to restore the fleet to its former size and killing efficiency. But again technology intervened against the seals.

In 1921 for the first time an airplane, a biplane, was used to locate the seal whelping patches before the sealing fleet set sail. This first attempt at locating seals from the air was a failure. However in 1922, seals were found from the air, although the fleet was not dispatched in time to intercept them. In 1923 things changed for the worse when seal sightings from the air were successful in directing sealers to the whelping patches.

Although the seal hunt was now a shadow of its former size and was generating a fraction of its former wealth, in 1937 the Norwegians, having depleted their own stocks of harp and hooded seals, began to sail their ships to the Front. When Germany invaded Norway in April 1940, the Norwegian vessels simply stayed in Newfoundland.

World War II did what the animal protection movement would try to do 40 years later, and brought the levels of sealing down to a near standstill. Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada and the Canadian seal hunt was largely regulated to the relatively small landsmen's hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The nature of the landsmen's hunt was changed in 1945 with the introduction of small power-driven boats. Five of these boats landed more than 11,000 seals in Newfoundland that year.

In 1949 Newfoundland and Labrador became the tenth province of Canada and the two seal hunts, that in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the one at the Front, collectively became the Canadian seal hunt. Norwegian interests and capital began to dominate the Newfoundland hunt. The "Canadian" seal hunt became very much a Norwegian enterprise.

In 1951 the largest kill of this century, over 312,000 seals, was recorded. By now Norwegians had brought a new idea to the hunt. They discovered ways of tanning the whitecoat pelt to preserve the snow-colored fur. Prior to then it was oil that was virtually the sole product from the hunt. There has always been some local consumption of seal meat. The part eaten is the meat attached to the shoulder girdle, incorrectly called "seal flipper." Seal flipper pie is considered a Newfoundland delicacy, although definitely an acquired taste. Most people find the meat rank and ill-tasting. The leather is also used although it has limited value, lacking the durability of cowhide. Current attempts to market seal meat outside Newfoundland are remarkably unsuccessful, nor has the leather much value. The United States, Canada's largest trading partner, bans any seal products under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Similarly the white fur is not well suited to make full-sized garments, but rather was used primarily for trim and for trinkets.

Like most mammals the hooded seal sheds the lanugo fur before birth. The young hooded, known in the industry by the name "blueback," is the most highly prized of all the northern true seal skins by the fashion fur industry, thus new pressures were being applied to the remaining seal herds.

In 1960, Dr. David Sergeant, upon reviewing newly acquired data on seal populations, warned, "Under these conditions, and without imposition of effective controls, the stock of western Atlantic harp seals must be considered to be in grave danger of catastrophic decline in numbers within a very few years."

Soon other warnings began to appear. The late Douglas Pimlott of the University of Toronto noted in 1967, "The [sealing] industry is greedy, it is over-capitalized and it holds a very short-term view of the resources. If it prevails in its demand for higher annual quotas than the seal population can sustain, the harp seals of the Front herd are likely to be exterminated within this century."

The Animal Protection Movement to the (Temporary) Rescue

We have now entered the time when many people, myself ... working on behalf of API ... included, began to try to end the commercial seal hunt. I will give here a only a brief history of that process. Suffice to say that when people like Doug Pimlott went to the ice, they found a chaotic situation, with spotter planes, helicopters, snowmobiles, power boats, large vessels, and rifle-toting sportsmen all slaughtering animals in the absence of any kind of control or regulation.

It was then that Brian Davies, who founded the International Fund for Animal Welfare in 1969, made the crusade against the commercial seal hunt his life's work. As early as the 1950s observers from humane societies had expressed concern about the cruelty of the hunt, but Davies was more responsible than any one person for bringing the hunt to the attention of the world. In its 28-year history IFAW has been involved in numerous animal protection campaigns, but it started with seals and has never left that issue.

In 1964, for the first time in history, technology worked for the seals when the slaughter of baby seals was televised. Those stark black and white images projected onto screens in Canadian and European homes shocked millions of people. The animal rights movement, as an entity distinct from the more traditional animal welfare movement, had yet to emerge. But Davies, then a part-time officer with the New Brunswick Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was simply astounded that such a barbaric endeavor as the commercial seal hunt could endure for so long. He correctly surmised that most people simply didn't know or understand what was happening. The written word was inadequate for conveying the sheer horror he had witnessed. What was needed was graphic images. What was needed was public attention.

Without going into details, let me address one concern that is consistently raised about the seal hunt protest movement; that it brings in money. Yes, it does, or rather, it most certainly did. Critics argued that Davies was "in it for the money." The same charge was leveled generally against the organizations, and even individuals, opposing the seal hunt. And now, with the hunt probably as cruel as it's ever been, those charges are again being made.

It's my opinion that if Brian Davies had used his marketing skill to sell real estate, to promote cars, or in almost any other capacity in the world of commerce, he'd have been a multi-millionaire many times over. Yes, he took a relatively large salary, but surely he earned it. What has always impressed me has been his understanding of the need to gain public support and work through the political system toward a specific resolution. It's not how rich IFAW is that matters, it's how it spends its money, and no organization has spent more on any animal issue than IFAW has committed to its opposition to the seal hunt.

By now the seal hunt, for all its ferocity and for all that it was in the process of destroying the seals forever, had nevertheless diminished in importance to the economy of Newfoundland and eastern Canada. Indeed, given the costs of icebreakers and fishery officers once regulations were finally in place, it appeared from some of the analysis we did that the hunt was essentially subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer. That was apparently true then and, as we shall see, is apparently true now.

Two months ago Clive Southey, who hold a PhD in Natural Resources Economics from the University of British Columbia and is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, published a paper entitled The Newfoundland Commercial Seal Hunt: An Economic Analysis of Costs and Benefits. In it he states:

In 1996 about 269,000 seals were killed in Canada, of which 242,000 were harp seals. Of the seals landed, about 25,000 pelts (2,065 harp seal whitecoats and 22,846 hooded seal bluebacks) were subsequently seized because they were allegedly taken in violation of Marine Mammal Regulations.

Newfoundland and Labrador accounted for 94% of the total catch. The sealing industry claims output valued at close to $11-12 million but double and triple counted items in arriving at this figure. Some industry advocates have inflated the claims to $15-20 m.

Results

• The best estimate of the output of the entire industry in 1996 is $8.96 m.
• Of this, $2.65 m is needed to cover purchased inputs (ammunition, fuel, insurance, etc.)
• Subtracting these expenses leaves only $6.31 m of Value-added.
• Government subsidies for meat transport and processing amount to $1.72 m.
• A further $1.67 m is spent by governments on inspection, rescue, support of industry, etc.
• Net potential benefits are now only $2.9 m.
• Meat subsidies are 3-4 times larger than the value of the processed meat in the market. We are told 6.5 million pounds of meat was processed, that is 7.5 times more than the previous year. Given that costs are many multiples of revenues, the gain to claiming subsidies but dumping the meat would have been huge.
• At least 30,290 penises were collected and processed. They account for $0.94 million. The Director General, Resource Management of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) suggests the true figure could be as high as 50,000 penises.
• Without penises, Value-added by the hunt drops to $1.7 m.
• For old harp seals, penises and meat subsidies cover fully 75% of the landed value paid to sealers.

Conclusion

• In 1996, Canadian taxpayers spent about 3.4 million dollars to subsidize the landing of seal meat, fund the Canadian Sealers' Association and finance other industry support and inspection services, etc.
• Value-added by the hunt is a mere .06% of the Gross Domestic Product of Newfoundland.
• The commercial hunt only added the equivalent of 100-120 full-time jobs (0.06% of the 190,000 employed in Newfoundland). In essence, the Canadian taxpayers are spending $28,250-33,900 for every full time position in the sealing industry.
• The sealing industry is heavily dependent on meat subsidies and the sale of seal penises. These constitute 55% of the revenue of sealers and boat owners after paying for fuel, ammunition, etc.
• If we eliminate seal meat subsidies, stop the trade in seal penises, and account for the true costs of labour and capital, the net value of the seal hunt to Canada as a whole is zero.

In essence, the answer to the question: "Is the commercial seal hunt worth it?" is no.

As we move into the middle and later decades of the 20th century, the "need" for seal oil has diminished. Before the trade in penises began, and before the government began subsidizing meat acquisition, it was the actual pelts of the whitecoats that were, thanks to the tanning processes developed by Norwegian sealing interests, of value. Put simply, while Canada took the blame and Canadian sealers took the risks (now greatly diminished from the days of Abram Kean) and Canadian taxpayers paid the bill, Norwegians, including expatriates based in Newfoundland, took the greater share of the profits.

The Seal Protection Regulations, first implemented by the Canadian government in 1965, have increasingly been modified to reduce the ability of anyone other than sealers to reach the seals. However, they have, in fact, set standards which, if followed, would assure a more humane death for seals slaughtered by sealers by precluding the likelihood of seals being skinned while conscious.

However, those aspects of the regulations are virtually unenforceable.

What Davies and later others documented was a horror show of savage butchery.

Seals were slaughtered in front of their mothers. No one questions that hooded seals will try to defend their young. But when the government argued that mother harp seals left their pups at the approach of a sealer, film was produced to show that some mother harp seals stayed and tried to defend their young. Sealers traditionally defended themselves by poking their hakapiks into the eyes of the defending adult seals, blinding them.

In one horrid piece of film footage I helped edit for the film, Hunt Without Pity, a young woman taken to the hunt by Brian Davies is distraught as she literally begs a fisheries officer to order a sealer to dispatch a mother seal he has just blinded. With obvious reluctance the officer eventually does so. That the woman was there was pure cheesecake and as such a precursor to tactics currently used by People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals in their controversial "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign; Davies decided showing the hunt to attractive female flight attendants would grab media attention.

Animals were shown being skinned alive. Seal hunt apologists tried to claim that the squirming bodies were simply displaying nervous reactions although the animals were actually unconscious. But soon the evidence that seal pups were sometimes alive and conscious when cut became overwhelming. The government responded by changing the Seal Protection Regulations to read that the animal must be limp, and with no corneal (eye) reflex, before it could be cut. The problem, again, was the impossibility of virtually any enforcement.

There was not nor has there ever been a major political party in Canada that stood opposed to the seal hunt. The reason is simple: any party so opposed would lose all seats in parliament it might hope to gain from constituencies in Newfoundland and Labrador, and most or all of the remaining Atlantic provinces. Championing the hunt, on the other hand, was a good way to gain votes in the Atlantic region of Canada.

Polls showed that Canadians outside Atlantic Canada generally opposed the seal hunt. Indeed, opposition to the seal hunt generated more mail to members of parliament than any other issue, including the issue of legal abortion, which was the great controversy of the day. But the opposition was spread over the population and would not damage any of the political parties whose policies were to support the seal hunt.

Canadian activists, most specifically including Captain Paul Watson, who left Greenpeace to found the Sea Shepherd Society, were increasingly hampered by ever more absurd Seal "Protection" Regulations and ever more Draconian measures thought up by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. In fact one could be arrested for simply setting foot on the ice. Technically the regulations prohibited an unlicensed person from approaching within a half mile of a seal. But there was absolutely no way to know where a seal might be, thus hundreds of thousands of square miles of Canadian territory were, as astounding as it seems, off limits to Canadians lacking written approval from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Once, in Prince Edward Island, I asked a fishery official if I could be arrested for strolling down to the beach and walking a few steps out onto the ice. There would, after all, be no way to know if a seal was within half a mile of me. He said, Yes, I would be arrested for simply taking a step offshore. (Mind you I did walk offshore, not to find seals, just to get an interesting angle for photographs. In such vast and empty landscapes there was no real risk of detection for me than there was for a sealer, somewhere over the near horizon, bending down and skinning a seal that is still conscious.)

However, while we animal protectionists obviously focus on how regulations destroyed any "rights" we felt we should have to protest, observe, document, or simply be near the hunt, or even to be near seals, they did curb some of the excesses of the traditional hunt. For the first time some quotas were established. The notorious hooked gaff, but not the hakapik, was banned as a killing weapon, and use of clubs, rifles, and shotguns was regulated. By 1970 the use of spotter planes to find patches was prohibited.

While it possibly could be argued that the main concern of most animal protectionists was humanitarian, there was very real concern about conservation, as well. It was argued by seal biologists that quotas were too large and that the seal population was in freefall decline. Put another way, the quotas were not working to protect seal populations from decline toward endangerment. It was not better than having no quotas.

In 1971 the Canadian government put together a controversial body called the Committee on Seals and Sealing (COSS). Although no one who would qualify by today's criteria as an animal rights advocate was on the committee, it did contain one animal welfarist, plus scientists and sealers. Its 1972 recommendation was that the hunt be phased out by 1974 to be followed by at least a six-year moratorium. Needless to say no government would implement such a recommendation and COSS, its teeth pulled (indeed, it never had teeth to pull!), eventually disbanded.

Davies obviously recognized the futility of trying to convince the Canadian government to end the seal hunt. The United States was not in the market, thanks to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and so Europe was targeted both by IFAW and other organizations, and by the Canadian government who, in 1978, joined forces with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador to send a panel to the U.S. and Europe to present "Canada's side" of the controversy. Then, as now, it was not really Canada who supported the hunt, it was the Canadian government, and the provincial governments and many of the people of Atlantic Canada.

There was violence associated with these efforts, always directed against those of us in opposition to the hunt. I well recall arriving in Prince Edward Island, on behalf of API, in March 1984, to learn that some of my good friends and colleagues from IFAW had narrowly escaped death when an angry mob in the Magdalen Islands trashed their helicopter.

However, I also remember the triumph when, on March 11, 1982, I received an excited phone call from colleagues in Europe telling me that the European Parliament adopted a resolution to ban the import of whitecoat pelts. On October 1, the following year, the European Economic Community (EEC) instituted a temporary ban on products from harp and hooded seal pups. In 1985, against the frantic wishes of the Canadian government, who was awaiting an overdue report from a Royal Commission on the sealing industry, the EEC extended the ban.

Numbers of seals killed plummeted, and while the hunt did not end -- has never ended -- hundreds of thousands of seals were saved.

But for how long?

We didn't know it then, but after all this long history of both the hunt and the seal hunt protest movement, and notwithstanding the subsequent emergence of the animal rights movement, it appears that the worst was yet to come.

And Now?

The Canadian government argues that it has outlawed the killing of seal pups, but by "pups" it only refers to neonates who have not yet started to shed their fetal fur, something they do at about 12 days of age. In other words animals that are two weeks old are not protected; the government and sealers do not consider them to be "pups."

In 1996 the official count of harp seals killed was 242,000. Kills of such magnitude have not been seen in a quarter of a century. The "Total Allowable Catch" (TAC) for hooded seals was 8,000, several times higher than it used to be. But the actual kill exceeded the TAC by more than 200%, at 25,000 animals killed.

Meanwhile IFAW was leaked a "home video" taken aboard a small boat showing several sealers out to do some sealing and bird shooting. In a reflection of the early days of the seal hunt protest movement, the Canadian Sealer's Association branded the video a hoax. That video showed numerous violations of the Seal Protection Regulations. The authenticity of the video was attested to in an interview with one of the sealers portrayed. The interview was conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Those sealers were finally charged. Two pled guilty to charges of hunting seals without a license. Four others pled guilty to other offenses, including skinning a live seal. They were fined and placed on probation.

It was, of course, argued by seal hunt apologists that the video, which shocked even people in Newfoundland, showed only an isolated incident. However, the fact remains that enforcement of the regulations is impossible given the vast size of the area in which the commercial seal hunt occurs. There is simply no way of knowing what is going on out there on the ice, out of sight of the officers of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

On shore DFO raided seal processing plants. The rumor (and we will leave it at that) is that the Department was goaded into making the raids after IFAW had uncovered evidence of wrongdoing. The raids were related to allegations of illegal taking of whitecoat harp seals and blueback hooded seal pups. In October, 101 individuals were charged with "contraventions of the Marine Mammal Regulations during the 1996 fisheries." Among those charged was Mark Small, then the president of the Canadian Sealers Association.

I never formally met Small, but I have a vivid memory of him from a few years earlier. It was in a hotel meeting room in St. John's, Newfoundland, where API was one of several organizations conducting a press conference on the seal hunt. The reporters were extremely hostile, challenging us and defending the hunt instead of merely asking questions. There was no pretense of objectivity. Suddenly Mark Small walked into the room, escorted by a gentleman wearing a suit and overcoat. From a bag carried under his arm the sealer produced a seal flipper with the meaty shoulder-blade attached and began waving it over his head in protest. Lights and cameras turned and focused on him for a few minutes. Then the man in the suit gently nudged him and walked him out of the room. It was a bizarre display of no discernable use beyond allowing Small to claim that he had defended his interest, I suppose, although he never even looked at us.

IFAW had conducted a shoreline tour of seal hunt areas in Newfoundland and released video showing evidence of numerous carcasses and pelts washing ashore. Some of the beaches of attraction to tourists were befouled by decomposing carcasses and pelts. A sealer with more respect for honesty than peer approval confirmed that some sealers were simply gathering up the meat and leaving the pelts behind. The government was paying a thirty-five cent (Canadian) per pound subsidy for seal meat.

That summer I visited northern Newfoundland and found and photographed a rotting piece of sealskin (see Mainstream, Fall 1996). I also saw several seal carcasses but it was impossible to reach where they were to try to determine if they had been shot or had died of natural causes the previous winter.

As I type these words we await an announcement on the 1998 TAC for harp and hooded seals. But in 1996 the TAC for harp seals had been raised from the 186,000 of the previous year to 250,000.

The hunt, which has always changed in response to multitudes of outside forces, is, if anything, more brutal than ever. The Canadian government argues that its new policy is to utilize all of the seal. But as Clive Southey's report indicates, there is only a significant market for one part of the seal, the penis of the adult male.

Frantic efforts are underway to develop markets for processed seal meat (seal pepperoni, anyone?), seal oil (it's being touted as a "health food," or would be, if it weren't for concerns about toxins), leather, and fur. In fact the only reliable market for the meat, and a very cheap market at that, is to produce meal for use at fur farms. Prince Edward Island, in particular, is noted for fox farming. It seems especially odious that one kind of horrendous abuse, the slaughter of seals, fuels yet another horrendous abuse, the keeping of fox, mink, and other furbearers in tiny cages to be bred, cruelly kept, and then killed in the interest of fashion and profit.

The seal penis is marketed in Asia, or to Asians in the western world, as an aphrodisiac. The Asian "sex trade" is, itself, a sleazy business that often victimizes children. There is no medical basis for belief that teas or other products derived from harp seal penises provide an aphrodisiac function, but whether they do or not the killing of animals to produce the product cannot be justified in the name of morality.

In the early stages of the anti-seal hunt movement I used to argue against emphasizing the "clubbing" of harp seals, and the focus on the pups. To me the seal slaughter is merely a symptom of a far greater malaise, the horrendously callous exploitation of all wildlife on the east coast. In 1984 Canadian author Farley Mowat wrote an astounding and atypical book called Sea of Slaughter (McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto). It is long and dry and rather painful to read, but it documents with brutally uncompromising and fully referenced detail the long history of destruction of so many different species of wildlife in the Northwest Atlantic. I avoid mystic consideration, but one might conclude upon contemplation of the destruction of the once vast quantities of animals who lived there that there is something in the air that promotes a callous support of destruction and disrespect for animals.

I hesitate to say that because the flip side of the coin is the fact that the people from "down east," for all their insularity and servitude to tradition, can also be among the friendliest and most generous of people. But from infancy they are exposed to the concept that the land is the only source of survival. Too often they see it as their right, defined by law, custom, and religious doctrine, to exploit animals.

One of the great changes since the early days of the seal hunt protest movement has been the collapse of the great northern cod fishery. In my opinion too few animal activists worry much about fish (as will be a subject of a future column of "Opinionatedly Yours") and the relentless slaughter of northern sea birds is too remote to much interest the animal protection movement. But thanks to the early efforts of the animal protection movement, many seals were once saved.

Now it's time to mobilize again. IFAW has started an organization called Canadians Against the Commercial Seal Hunt (CATCSH). It seeks to draw grassroots organizations together to put pressure on the federal government. Simultaneously Americans, Canadians, and Europeans are being educated to understand that the fight was not won. Seals are again under attack.

And yet it seems to me that the animal protection movement is, overall, strangely quiescent on the issue. One could speculate endlessly as to whether or not my feeling is well-founded, and if so, what are the reasons. Certainly the very success of the "animal rights" movement has led all of us to now spread our concerns over a much wider spectrum of concern than was the case when the seal hunt protest movement started.

Ironically, the acceptance of the "animal rights" philosophy has led to the development of a virtual subculture of activists for whom the seal hunt is simply not an attractive target since it does not lend itself to the tactics they prefer. Apart from demonstrating against Canadian embassies or symbols such as Canadian corporations, or possibly boycotting Canadian products, what does a non-Canadian do? Or a Canadian, for that matter?

IFAW recently commissioned The Angus Reid Group to poll Canadians on the issue. The results show that 41% of Canadians were unaware that the commercial seal hunt was continuing off the east coast! If that many people in the country where it is happening are unaware, what can we expect elsewhere?

Of particular interest is the inverse relationship between Canadians who think the government does not allow the hunting of seals who are under one year of age, and where those Canadians live. In British Columbia, farthest from the hunt, only 35% of Canadians believe that hunting young seals is prohibited. But in Newfoundland, where the actual hunt occurs, an astounding 77% believe seal pups are no longer killed. This ignorance of the facts goes a long way to explain a propaganda-driven polarization between those of us Canadians opposed to the seal hunt, and those who support it.

However, once aware of the hunt, most Canadians oppose it even as they unwittingly support it with their tax dollars.

Meanwhile, the butchery continues. In this column and in future ones, and through our other publications, API will try to at least help Americans and others to understand that the seal hunt continues and is as bad as ever it was in terms of sheer brutality.

Clubbing Versus Shooting

Finally, in defense of my belief that as we tackle animal protection issues, the more we know about them the better we are likely to be in achieving justice for animals, I'd like to make an observation.

In the early days of the seal hunt protest movement I used to argue with my colleagues that we should not so exclusively focus on two things: seal pups and seal clubbing.

The appeal of the whitecoat and the blueback is obvious. But animals a few days, weeks, months, or years older are equally capable of suffering. It is not because they are young, cute, cuddly, helpless, and appealing that we should be concerned, but because they are sentient beings capable of suffering.

My other concern was with regard to the relentless emphasis on clubbing.

There is something extraordinarily brutal in the now infamous image of a sealer standing over a tiny seal pup, club raised, about to pound in the animal's skull. When we were editing the film, Hunt Without Pity, used in Europe to help convince politicians to support a ban in seal pup products, we realized that some scenes were actually too brutal for viewers to stomach. We limited ourselves to showing a pup struck on the head no more than three times. Under the regulations three blows to the head were mandated, the theory being that three such blows should be enough to render the animal unconscious. In fact often the sealer would pound the animal again and again and again as the small animal screamed and squirmed, blood squirting out onto the white ice.

A fat whitecoat's skull is surprisingly sturdy and resilient. The animal, although appearing to be motionlessly accepting of its fate, would actually tend to pull the head into the body, with a layer of fat from the nape providing a level of protection from the blows. Oh, the blood would spurt from nostrils and mouths and the animals would squirm or squeal, but sometimes they would not go limp. A well delivered blow might well work as intended, but too often the sealers were tired, the animals would move, the ice would shift, and the blow would only hurt the pup, not bring the mercy of insensibility.

Looking over the old anti-seal hunt literature, most particularly including that of API, it sometimes seems as though it were the clubbing, not the killing, that was the objection.

Perhaps we should be grateful that clubbing is relatively rare, but let us clearly understand that the clubbing has been replaced by shooting. If the bullet smashes through the animal's brain, death is virtually instantaneous. But if not, the animal is likely to feel intense pain and fear as he or she lunges toward the edge of the ice. The brain is a small target located on an animal on a floating ice flow, shot from a floating boat by a sealer who may or may not be a proficient marksman. Yes, it is calm in the leads in among the pack ice, but not dead still. And yes, a second or third shot may stop the animal's escape, but a seal who does escape with a bullet wound is most unlikely to experience anything other than a slow cruel death amid the pack ice.

Clubbing is unacceptably bad, but shooting is worse.

I'll write more about the Canadian seal hunt in future editions of "Opinionatedly Yours," but for now, please pass this kind of information around. Be aware, as so many are not, that our continent is host to the world's largest slaughter of marine mammals. The cruelty continues at a magnitude not previously seen in this century.

We won a major victory before, we can do it again. But first we must be aware.