93 



bloody, lifeless carcass of her own pup. This year, in Canada's Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, some 45,000 baby seals were killed in this manner. 



Nor do the adults escape the fury of the hunters in the Northwest 

 Atlantic where both the Norwegian and Canadian icebreakers roam. 

 They are clubbed, speared, and shot. In 1971, a gentlemen's agreement 

 fixed the number to be dealt with in this way at 245,000 harp seals. 

 But, to obtain this number many more were wounded or killed and lost 

 under the ice. In pelagic sealing sometimes as few as one in five shot is 

 recovered. As a matter of fact, the United States carried out its own 

 pelagic sealing in the name of "research" in the Pacific in 1968. That 

 year, employees of our Department of the Interior shot and captured 

 824 seals, primary females, ostensibly for the purpose of finding out 

 what seals eat and certifying the pregnancy rates. But to obtain those 

 824 seals another 3,586 seals were shot, killed, or wounded and lost. 



There can be no doubt that our own country^ shares a great deal of 

 blame for the senseless killing done by other nations. By providing a 

 major market for sealskin coats and the suede leather obtained from 

 baby seals, we have made the seal kill economically worthwhile and 

 have encouraged this carnage. 



Arguments that the harp seals are killed to prevent overcrowding are 

 nonsense. The press release from the Canadian Department of Fisheries 

 and Forestry which announced the opening of the slaughter last March 

 admitted that there had been an overkill in the North Atlantic in recent 

 years, and that the herd that arrived off Labrador was, and I quote, 

 "seriously depleted." Canada's own figures indicate that the size of the 

 herd has been reduced within the last 20 years from 5 million to li^ 

 million — a depletion of about 70 percent. 



The South Africans also carry on a baby seal kill for the benefit of 

 the LT.S. fur industry. An Associated Press article which appeared in 

 many papers in August 1971, described how some 80,000 baby seals are 

 "harvested." They are beaten on the head witli clubs, stabbed with a 

 stiletto, and then skinned, presumably while their terrified mothers 

 look on in helpless agony. According to the article, the baby seals are 

 killed because their pelts bring some $1.4 million on the U.S. market, 

 where they are later processed and sold as sealskin coats. The slaughter 

 may still be continuing at this very moment wliile we sit here deliberat- 

 ing our guilt. 



Not only does our country encourage other nations to kill seals, but 

 our Government, I am ashamed to say, has its very own official seal- 

 killing operation. In July and August, on the Pribilof Islands in the 

 Bering Sea oif Alaska, tens of thousands of Alaskan fur seals are 

 driven inland until their lungs are bursting and then clubbed to death 

 by employees of the U.S. Government, formerly of the Department 

 of Interior, now the Department of Commerce. 



In the summer of 1970, 1 spent 10 days on the Island of St. Paul, one 

 of the Pribilofs. Accompanying me were two professional filmmakers,- 

 Tom By waters and Victor Losick. On June 25, the island manager, Eoy 

 Hurd, drove us to the Zapadni liauling grounds. From notes written 

 while I was on the island, these are some of my observations : 



By our time of arrival at the hauling grounds (5:20 a.m.) virtually all of the 

 se<als — about 1,000 animals — had been driven over the roeks in pods of about 90 

 to a flat -stretch of green— the killing field. Half of the herd was being driven 

 up a steep hill to another field to await their turn. By 8 :30, 366 seals had clubbed, 



