91 



Jacques Cousteau, whose important endorsement of this bill was 

 presented by Mr. Pryor, estimated on the basis of his own undersea 

 observation that ocean life has decreased by 40 percent in the last 

 20 years. Commenting on this statistic, Dr. George M. Woodwell, 

 an ecologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, said, "We scien- 

 tists are just about the last to come across any real proof. But my guess 

 is that Cousteau is dead right." The pollution of the rivers with DDT, 

 mercury, and other chemicals means that the oceans into which the 

 rivers flow are fast becoming the final cesspool of most of man's 

 activities. Dr. Cousteau says flatly, "The oceans are dying while so- 

 ciety adopts an ostrich policy.'" 



Certainly the pollution and oil slicks are making survival for the 

 oceans' mammals extremely difficult without adding to it the sense- 

 less slaughter for commercial gain and "sportsmen's" pleasure. To 

 those who subscribe to the outmoded belief that the animals are here 

 solely for man's use, we suggest they preserve the mammals as a 

 barometer of the ocean's viability much as miners use canaries to test 

 air quality. Even the Department of the Interior suggests this with 

 their new slogan, "When wildlife tries to tell us something we had 

 better pay attention. That which pollutes the habitat of any living 

 thing pollutes the environment of all living things." 



The relatively new field of ecology expresses a new humility, a will- 

 ingness to admit that the interrelationships of all living things are 

 so complex we cannot possibly know how many of any given species 

 is needed. This is particularly true of the mysterious oceans, and yet 

 the opponents of this bill — the National Rifle Association, the sports- 

 hunters, and commercial interests, not to mention the multitude of 

 bureaucrats involved in the research boondoggles and the massacres, 

 put their argument on the side of "scientific management." 



While we will concede that biologists succeed very well in breeding 

 some species of wildlife and stimulating the populations of other land 

 animals — quail, turkey, elk, deer, and other so-called game species — 

 their management abilities simply do not apply to ocean mammals. 

 No one can breed a seal, a whale, a walrus — nor do anything to increase 

 their populations — except to stop killing them. Man has not stopped 

 the forces of nature. The inability to manage nature, even a single 

 species, is found in this statement of a biologist employed in Com- 

 merce's seal kill operation : 



Wildlife populations cannot be managed with the same precision as domestic 

 populations. We have no direct control of natural mortality (which determines 

 survival ) , from birth to the age of reproduction which is one of the most critical 

 factors in managing a wildlife species. 



The full statement of this Government biologist is submitted to the 

 chairman. It is highly interesting in that, after describing the failure 

 of the kills on the Pribilofs to achieve maximum sustainable yield — 

 maximum number of skins — he tries to get the exercise in mayhem 

 out from under by describing it as an experiment in the population 

 dynamics of fur seals. Then he pays token to nature's powers by 

 saying that with a cessation of killing females an increase in the 

 population should take place, but adds this chilling qualification, and 

 I quote, "if environmental conditions are the same now as they were 

 in the late 1920's." 



