d4 



stuck, and skinned. Sixteen teenage children removed the penis and testicles from 

 the carcasses, for sale to a firm which peddles them for cocktail stirrers and 

 aphrodisiacs. 



Tlie kill : five to nine seals would he separated from tlie herd hy a man rattling 

 a can to frighten them into moving into front of the clubbers. In almost all cases 

 the seals received two blows. Whether tMs was necessary or just to show that 

 they make certain, I could not knmv— except in the instances where the first 

 blow fell on the body. About everj' fourth seal received a severe blow on the 

 back before it was felled with a second or third i)low to the head. 



I stood about five feet from one seal which was permitted to escaiJe after 

 receiving a glancing blow, and it waddled i>ast me toward the water with blood 

 streaming from the socket where an eye had been socketl loose. Tliis .same .seal 

 had fish net embedded in its coat, which, I wa.s told, was the reason for not 

 chasing it. The fur is not valuable commercially when it has been mangled with 

 fish net. 



The terror of the seals during the long hours of waiting and watching the 

 murder of their friends and relatives was pathetic, the ultimate in sadistic 

 treatment. Mr. Hurd gave as the reason for driving the seals from the hauling 

 grounds all at one time, the cost of employing more men to stand guard to pre- 

 vent escape into the siea. 



At this point, may I briefly address myself to the Commerce Depart- 

 ment's defense of their "sealing operation ?"' 



1. They claim, first of all, that clubbing the seals to death is the 

 most "himiane" way of killing them. To use the word "humane" in this 

 context is a perversion of language and reality, but I do not wis!h to 

 argue over how the seals are killed. The point is that there is no justi- 

 ficaJtion for killing these intelligent, highly-evolved creatures: seal- 

 skin coats are hardly a necessity to our society. 



'2. The Commerce Department continuously emphasizes that the size 

 of the Pribilof seal herd has risen from 200,000 seals in 1911 to ap- 

 proximately 1.3 million today. But to compare 1971 with 1911 is an 

 entirely spurious size of the herd, and this is given in an official ac- 

 count as exceeding 5 million. Encyclopedia Americana, volume 24, 

 pages 480 to 485, article by Seton Thompson, Chief, Division of Alas- 

 kan Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The same article gives 

 an estimate for 1948, the period following the Second World War 

 moratorium on killing, as about 4 million. 



Hence, if the herd today is 1.3 million, as Commerce claims, then the 

 size of the Alaskan herd has decreased — not increased — by about 75 

 percent. 



It should be noted that the Russians have stated publicly that there 

 is a "serious depletion in the once-huge herd." And since there is great 

 intermingling, according to Interior's reports, between the seals which 

 breed on the Eussian Islands and those which breed on the Pribilofs, 

 it is clear that the Pribilof herd is also seriously depleted. 



But the bureaucrats employed in the Pribilof operation will be the 

 last to admit this. Their tactics with the public — and the Congress^- 

 bring to mind the old cliche, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." 



For example, the manager of the program, William Peck, on return- 

 ing to the States after this year's kill, told a Seattle Times reporter, 

 and I quote, "Births on the islands show no downward trend." He 

 said this even though he knows very well that there has been a stag- 

 gering 52-percent decrease in births over the past 10 years. I append 

 the official statistics. 



The Seattle Times reports that "this year's take of fur seals in the 

 Pribilofs totaled 31,847 skins, compared with 42,179 a year ago." 



