492 



the porpoises, they have nothing to fear from legislation which re- 

 quires that tuna, alone, will be taken in the nets and that no ocean 

 mammals will meet death in the course of puree seining. If. however, 

 these nets are not the answer, then the industry and our Government 

 must expend the necessary funds to return our country to a position 

 which the ancient Greeks could ha\e respected. 



Porpoises are not the only sea mammals being caught in the nets 

 and slowly drowned. And it is miportant to remember that the drown- 

 ing of a sea mammal is far. far worse than the drowning of a terres- 

 trial animal. Since these creatures can remain below the surface for so 

 long a time, the terror which people who have almost, but not quite, 

 drowned, describe would be drawn out in a horrible manner. We are 

 informed that seals are being caught in nets along the coasts of Xew- 

 foimdland. Labrador, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence and drowned. 

 Massive shooting of seals at long range, which we have so fortunately 

 avoided in our country, takes place every year both in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and on the so-called front just beyond Canadian juris- 

 diction. Xor are most of the Canadian land-based sealers regulated. 

 They reportedly rush out with any kind of a stick they may pick up 

 to club effectively or ineffectively the baby seals wliich they then skin. 



Dr. Harry Lillie described the slaughter in 1964 as follows: 



The baby seals, helpless on the ice. are knocked on the head with gaflfs. rough 

 cut wooden staffs. This properly done involves no suffering and there is no other 

 satisfactory humane method, but sometimes men will just daze the young seals 

 with a kick before cutting the bodies out of the fat and skin. Later in the season 

 when the babies have taken to the water at three weeks to a month, the adult 

 seals gather on the ice to moult. They are then shot from a distance with rifles, 

 involving great cruelty and waste, many escaping badly wounded to die under 

 the ice. Losses have been as high as two lost for every one secured and I have 

 seen as many as five blood trails leading off one single ice floe with not one seal 

 recovered. 



Since that time international publicity has been focused on the 

 killing of baby seals, and fisheries officers have been sent out to super- 

 vise the killing of the seals on the Canadian ice floes. Major improve- 

 ments have been made in the killing of seals under their jurisdiction; 

 however, large numbers are killed in areas where there are no fisheries 

 officers. 



There are thus three inhumane methods whereby the skins of im- 

 mature and mature harp and hood seals are being obtained outside the 

 jurisdiction of the L^nited States: (1) shooting of adult seals, many 

 of whom are only wounded and die slowly. (2) ineffective stunning of 

 baby seals where no fisheries officers are on duty, and (3) netting of 

 seals who are killed by drowning, a slow and terrifying process for an 

 ocean mammal. 



Even more horrifying as a method of killing is the explosive harpoon 

 which is universally used by the whaling industry. As the film. "Thar 

 She Blows'" so explicitly shows, the explosive harpoon causes appal- 

 ling suffering. The narrator points out that it seldom kills with one 

 shot. "Sometimes a whale drags the boat all over the ocean before the 

 gunner can finish him off." "We see two and three harpoons being 

 sunk into the same whale. The grenade goes off within the body of the 

 whale, causing excruciating pain. I hope the subcommittee will be 

 able to see the closing few minutes of this film in which the narrator 

 reports that the whales "encircled their wounded brother as if to 



