573 



Ax About To Fall Again on Fur Seiax 



( By Lewis Regenstein ) 



Regenstein, a U.S. government employee, lives in Arlington and is a consultant 

 to the Committee on Humane Legislation. 



Next Friday, with the opening of this year's Atlantic seal hunt, the slaughter 

 of some 245,000 harp seals will begin. A particularly brutal aspect of this event 

 will take place on the ice floes in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence. The harp seals 

 return there every spring from their Atlantic migrations to give birth to their 

 pups, one of nature's friendliest and most appealing creatures. 



Within the flrst three or four days of life, the furs of the newborn pups turn 

 snow white and remain that way for only about 10 days, afterward turning a 

 gray color. These infant "whitecoats" are eagerly sought by hunters, and they 

 are killed in a manner which, if observed, would surely trouble anyone slipping 

 into a seal fur-trimmed parka for a day's recreation on the slopes. 



It is during the pups' nursing ijeriod. when they are only a few days old and 

 are completely helpless, that hunters descend on the seal herds to beat, spear, and 

 club the baby seals to death. The killing and skinning of the pups take place in 

 full sight of the terrified mothers, many of which stay with their young and try 

 to protect them. 



Seals are generally friendly and unafraid of their fellow mammals, and they 

 become confused when the hunters attack them. The mothers that are driven 

 off poke their heads from the water holes and watch helplessly ; and at the end 

 of the day, many of them crawl back on the ice to nuzzle and mourn over the 

 bloody, lifeless carcasses of their dead young. 



Nor do the adult seals escape the fury of the hunters. Shooting is a common 

 method for killing them, but the treacherous weather and icy conditions can 

 cause many of the seals to escape wounded, only to flounder about painfully, wait- 

 ing for a slow and lonely death under the ice. It is not the old, the weak and the 

 diseased that are killed off, but rather the strong and aggressive, and those 

 seals which are curious and even friendly enough to allow a hunter to approach 

 them. 



Last year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, some 50,000 seals were killed in the hunt ; 

 this year's quota has been set at 45,000. 



But this is only a fraction of the seals killed every year in the Canadian- 

 Norwegian seal hunt in the Atlantic. Last year, Canada admits that "close to 

 300,000" seals were "harvested," although other observers claim that tlie figure 

 was closer to half a million. 



This year's quota has been reduced to 245,000 harp seals, since there is some 

 concern that the once-huge herds are suffering serious depletion. There is, how- 

 ever, no way of verifying whether this quota will be adhered to. 



Not surprisingly, the annual seal kill (which the Canadian government takes 

 pains to refer to as a "slaughtering operation") has generated a yearly outcry. 

 This protest is led in Canada by Brian Davies of the International Fund for 

 Animal Welfare, and in the United States by Alice Herrington of a New York- 

 based group called Friends of Animals. Inc., whose poignant ads showing a pic- 

 ture of a baby seal have become familiar to readers of The New York Times. 

 Both have witnessed the hunt and describe it as brutal and inhumane. 



The Canadian government has responded to these protests by defending both 

 its methods and purposes. Ottawa points out that seals are not an "endangered 

 species," and claims that if vast numbers of seals were not killed off every year, 

 the herds would grow too big. However, recent press releases from the Depart- 

 ment of Fisheries and Forestry announcing the opening of the new season admit 

 that there has been an overkill in the North Atlantic in recent years, and that 

 the herd that arrives off Labrador each year is "seriously depleted." 



Conservationists contend that there would be no real danger of overcrowding 

 if the herd were allowed to increase to its natural size, since seals are gregarious 

 by nature and tend to bunch together "like people at a cocktail party." Moreover, 

 Ottawa's own figures indicate that the size of the herd has been reduced within 

 the last 20 years from 3 to 2 million. 



Canada also stresses the economic benefits of the hunt, although ofllcial figures 

 for 1969 show that the average land hunter earned a gross income of only $120. 

 These residents of the coastal areas — called landsmen — pay $1 for a license to 

 participate. The ambitious hunter can kill and skin about 125 baby seals a day 

 at about $7 per skin, though this is rare. Some conservationists have suggested 

 that at least this much more income would accrue to the inhabitants of the area 



