Sea of Slaughter

by Farley Mowat

  Toward the end of 1980, LeBlanc seems to have realized that the protest movement could neither be suppressed nor contained and that it might eventually succeed in bringing about an end to sealing in Canadian waters. Concrete evidence of its effectiveness was already at hand in the form of a sharp decline in the demand for sealskin products on European markets due to the adverse publicity sealing was receiving there. Even on the home front, informal polls showed that at least half of all Canadians were now opposed to the annual slaughter.

  Considering these circumstances, LeBlanc and his bureaucrats determined to make the best use of what time remained. In 1981, Fisheries and Oceans unleashed what amounted to total war against the ice seals.

  NAFO’s and the department’s creative statisticians (they were really one and the same) outdid themselves by producing figures suggesting that, despite the enormous destruction of recent years, harp seal pup production had almost doubled to nearly half a million whitecoats annually. Release of these statistics was accompanied by dire prophecies of a “seal emergency” that could inflict crushing economic damage on the entire northwestern Atlantic fishery unless the seal explosion was contained. Drastic action was needed to forestall such a calamity.

  It was forthcoming.

  Although the NAFO quota for 1981 was set at the extremely generous figure of 183,000 for the Front and Gulf regions, the sealers perfectly understood that it would not be enforced. They were deliberately encouraged to “go for broke.” Norwegians and Canadians alike extended themselves to the limit to take advantage of this open-ended opportunity. As a result, they slaughtered well over a quarter of a million ice seals, most of which were pups. The official figure released by NAFO for catches by Norwegian and Canadian sealers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in Canadian-controlled waters off Newfoundland and Labrador was 201,162. However, Statistics Canada reported that, in 1981, Canada alone exported at least 224,000 seal pelts, the vast majority of which were from harp seals. Neither figure takes into account the number of seals killed and not recovered. The destruction was so massive that the Norwegian buyers were surfeited and subsequently had to dump at least 20,000 pelts. However, they suffered no financial loss thereby, having been “reimbursed” by the Canadian government. There is reason to believe that Fisheries and Oceans had, in fact, been subsidizing the industry in this way with taxpayers’ money for several years, in effect guaranteeing payment for skins taken in excess of market needs.

  This otherwise eminently successful “cull” was marred, from LeBlanc’s point of view, when part of the Gulf whelping ice was gale-driven onto the beaches of a national park in Prince Edward Island. As the ice that bore the seal pups began to come ashore, Fisheries and Oceans officers hastily licensed about 200 local fishermen to go after them. Most of these men and youths had never killed or skinned a seal before, and the instructions given to them were rudimentary in the extreme. Before the guardians of law and order could cordon off the area and exclude media people and anti-sealing protesters, some of these were able to observe an effectively unregulated slaughter of whitecoats (including the skinning alive of pups) that amounted to outright massacre. When films of this atrocity appeared on television worldwide, the flames of protest mounted.

  Brian Davies took full advantage of this gory publicity to spotlight a bold new campaign against commercial sealing. In collaboration with several other conservation groups, he had established a powerful lobby directed at persuading the ten-nation European Economic Community to prohibit the import into Europe of the skins of ice-seal pups. As 1981 drew to a close it began to look as if this remarkable initiative might come to something, and the Canadian governments, which at first had taken the matter lightly, became alarmed. The state of affairs early in 1982 is described in this contemporary column by Barry Kent MacKay in the Toronto Star:

  “The parliament of the European Economic Community... will [soon] consider a motion for a ban on products from harp and hood seal pups... The Canadian government has tax-funded representatives there now, trying to convince members of the European parliament that the seal hunt is an institution supported by most Canadians and an important part of our economy and that a ban would be seen by us as some form of anti-Canadian bigotry.

  “It’s utter nonsense, of course. The seal hunt has generated more protest mail to Ottawa than any other issue, for all the good it has done. There has never been a national plebiscite on the seal hunt. The people I’ve met who support the hunt do so either for illogically emotional reasons or because they trustingly believe the pro-hunt propaganda of the federal government, not realizing most of it is misleading or false.

  “To prepare the way for its lobbyists, the federal government recently increased the quota... This gives the impression seal stocks are increasing, but you can be sure the Canadian lobby won’t think to mention... the independent Canadian and foreign scientists who are in disagreement with the federal government’s figures and fear that seal stocks are in decline...

  “The lobbyists will doubtless prattle on about seals eating too many fish at the expense of Canada’s commercial fishing industry although, in truth, the decline in fish stocks was caused by the greed of the commercial fishing industry.

  “The Canadian delegation will, I suspect, forget to mention that [ice] seals fast while whelping and, at other times, eat primarily non-commercial fish species far from the fishing banks of Newfoundland. If left alone the harp and hood seals would have no significant effect on commercial fish stocks.

  “The Europeans won’t hear that our government refuses to make public how much it costs us to regulate, monitor and promote the hunt.

  “No one will be told that the gross value of the seal hunt to Canada is the economic equivalent of two McDonald’s restaurants.

  “The EEC won’t hear about Canadian citizens and foreign visitors who have been assaulted and had their films of [the] hunt stolen by federal police, nor are they likely to be told of Canadian citizens jailed and heavily fined for trying to observe, photograph or protest the hunt.

  “Europeans won’t hear that the regulations governing the hunt are not passed by Parliament, but are achieved through orders-in-council and function primarily to keep observers from the hunt. Violations of the regulations by humanitarians are always vigorously prosecuted, but violations by sealers are always ignored.

  “The Europeans may even be asked to believe the sort of nonsense spewed by the Canadian High Commissioner in London, who claimed: ‘One blow kills a seal, and since exsanguination follows, it is a physical impossibility to skin a seal alive.’ ”

  On March 11, 1982, even as the annual slaughter was beginning, the EEC parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, voted 160 to 10 in support of a resolution calling for a ban by member states on the import of the skins of both harp and hood seal pups. Since the parliament’s role is mainly advisory, it was left to the EEC Commissioners and Council of Ministers to decide whether or not to act on the resolution. This they were in no hurry to do. Nevertheless, the resolution itself so infuriated Roméo LeBlanc that he forsook caution and announced that, should “commercial harvesting” of the ice seals be ended, government agencies would themselves take over the “cull” in the name of fisheries protection, even as they had done with grey and harbour seals.

  The cat was finally out of the bag.

  I do not know if this outburst had anything to do with it—perhaps LeBlanc was simply exhausted by the struggle—but shortly thereafter he was replaced as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans by the Honourable Pierre de Bané.

  The 1982 spring slaughter, which even some protesters (having been insensibly seduced into using newspeak) were now calling a cull, took place as usual. And yet, the sealers were only able to find, kill, and land 69,000 whitecoats out of the half-million that NAFO and de Bané’s scientists estimated had been born that year. The discrepancy was embarrassing, and so was the result of a Gallup Poll that confi
rmed that 60 per cent of Canadians now wanted the seal slaughter stopped.

  Even more perturbing for the new Minister was the prospect that the EEC Commissioners might implement the recommended European ban. Not-so-genteel threats were made by high Canadian officials to the effect that such a move could lead to the restriction or even cancellation of quotas for European nations fishing in Canadian waters. Canada’s Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, was quoted as saying that Canada would think about reprisals. This put the EEC Environment Commissioners in a pretty plight, for they had already received petitions carrying as many as five million signatures from their own constituents, demanding that the ban be imposed. Under the leadership of Commissioner Karl-Heinz Narjes, they decided to postpone a decision, which was to have been made in July, until September of 1982. This was only the first of several such delays.

  As 1983 began, the Commissioners were enduring increasing pressure from an international coalition that included the Europgroup for Animal Welfare, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Fund for Animal Welfare, People’s Trust for Endangered Species, World Society for the Protection of Animals, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. On the other hand, they were being heavily pressured by Canada and Norway. To make things worse, some of the EEC nations, especially France and Britain, were beginning to side with the Canadian government.

  Finally, on February 28, 1983, the EEC Environmental Council bit the bullet and directed the member states to prohibit the import of the skins of harp whitecoats and hood bluebacks into their territories. The ban was subject to two caveats negotiated by Norway and Canada. It would not come into effect until October, 1983; and it would remain in place for only two years.

  Fisheries and Oceans had reason to be pleased if not contented by this outcome. The decision would have no effect on the 1983 “cull”; and it was not a permanent ban. Furthermore, as we shall see, it contained (and had been designed to contain) a loophole that rendered its restrictions all but meaningless.

  Mr. de Bané’s department was less pleased by the actions of some of its allies. The chief European purchaser and processor of sealskins, Christian Rieber of Bergen, announced that, due to the effect of the voluntary boycott on seal products throughout Europe and an enormous resultant backlog of unsold pelts from previous seasons, he would accept no whitecoats from the 1983 hunt and no more than 60,000 beater and adult skins. Rieber’s suppliers in Canada, Karlsen and the pelt-buying company Carino, confirmed that they would buy no more than that number and, furthermore, would offer sealers only half the price paid the previous year.

  Despite this setback, de Bané’s department did everything it could to ensure the maximum destruction of ice seals that spring. Dangling a quota of 186,000 harps and 12,000 hoods in front of the sealers, it encouraged them to kill as many as possible in the expectation that the existing market would improve and that new ones would be found. Magdalen Island sealers were given to understand that the limits set by Karlsen and Carino were only a ploy; that every pelt brought ashore would find a market and a fair price, even if this had to be subsidized by Ottawa. Newfoundland’s Minister of Fisheries, Jim Morgan, whipped the sealers of his province on with a rousing challenge to defend their “traditional way of life and culture.” Furthermore, he told them, they must kill at least 100,000 seals in order to save the cod fishery from destruction. He also offered to provide $500,000 to “subsidize” the purchase of pelts by Carino.

  As it had done every year since its inception, Davies’ IFAW sent an observer team to the Gulf hunt. It included representatives from the Toronto Humane Society and the Animal Protection Institute of America. Based in Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island, the group made several visits to the whelping ice before the season opened. Although the trips were legal because the hunt had not yet started, the visitors were nonetheless harassed and warned away by Fisheries protec-tion officers.

  On the morning of March 8, members of the group were awakened by the ugly sound of a mob outside their motel. It consisted of sixty to a hundred P.E.I. fishermen supporting a group of Newfoundland sealers flown in for the occasion. The message of this belligerent crowd was chillingly direct: either the IFAW team (which included several women) would voluntarily leave Prince Edward Island before 5:00 PM—or face the prospect of being “shipped out in garbage bags.” Whether or not those threats were seriously meant, a few days later when an IFAW crew attempted to launch a small boat at Savage Harbour, they were attacked by another mob and considerable damage was done to both their boat and truck.

  There were other troubles. On March 22, the sealing vessels Chester and Technoventure entered the Gulf whelping ice and began killing pups. Chester belonged to the Karlsen Shipping Company, while Technoventure was killing for the Carino Company. The sealers had been “into the fat” for only two days when a third ship appeared on the scene. She was an antiquated ex-trawler called Sea Shepherd II, crewed by sixteen men and five women of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a radical organization led by Paul Watson, who had already acquired a considerable reputation for taking direct action against pirate whalers. During the early hours of Friday, March 24, Sea Shepherd crunched through the floes toward Chester, whose sealers had already left their ship and were working the ice, leaving patches of ruby-red slush glowing in the light of the rising sun as they clubbed and sculped successive patches of pups.

  Sea Shepherd’s arrival was not unexpected. Some days earlier, Watson had warned that his organization was prepared to intervene directly in the hunt if he found sealers engaged in slaughtering pups. Shadowed by Canadian government ships and aircraft, Sea Shepherd had first blockaded St. John’s harbour, then, when no sealing vessels emerged, had set course for the Gulf. During the night of March 23, Chester and Technoventure were warned of Watson’s approach. Technoventure developed engine trouble that did not, however, prevent her from hurriedly steaming off for Halifax. Chester held her ground.

  Watched with considerable apprehension by Chester’s sealers, many of whom were Newfoundlanders, Watson’s old fishing boat bore steadily down upon them with siren blaring. When barely a ship’s length separated the two vessels, Watson put his helm over and, stepping out on the wing of his rusty bridge, shouted an ultimatum. Either Chester would cease sealing immediately, or take the consequences of having the trawler rampaging through the ice where pup killing was taking place.

  Chester’s tough Norwegian Master decided not to call Watson’s bluff. He sounded his own siren, bringing his sealers scrambling back on board. As radio messages crackled through the spring air, several small fishing vessels carrying seal hunters from the Magdalens discreetly returned to port. The morning sun blazed down on what had become a peaceful tableau. The two ships lay at rest within the pack. Around them the bleating of seal pups calling to their mothers was almost the only sound. Then the day was shattered by the hellish clatter of helicopter rotors.

  During the next twenty-four hours, Fisheries and RCMP helicopters and Canadian Forces tracker aircraft roared and chattered over Sea Shepherd. Heaving huge on the horizon, the massive Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker John A. Macdonald came crashing through the pack to take up station a stone’s throw from Watson’s vessel. Radio, verbal, and visual signals ordering Watson to take his ship into the Magdalen port of Cap Aux Meules were ignored. So long as Chester remained in the patch, Sea Shepherd would remain as well. An RCMP helicopter attempted to land a posse on Watson’s ship but sheered off when it was seen that her decks were barricaded with barbed wire.

  On Sunday, March 26, this “rabid interference with the rights of ordinary Canadians to earn a living” came to an abrupt end. While the towering bulk of the 350-foot Macdonald lay across Sea Shepherd’s bows to prevent her from attempting to escape, a second icebreaker, Sir William Alexander, carrying an RCMP Emergency Response Team, moved in. What followed is described by one of Sea Shepherd’s volunteers.

&nb
sp; “The Sir William Alexander rammed Sea Shepherd in the stern and slid along the starboard side. A weight hanging from a boom swung down and cleared off the barbed wire fence. Smoke cannisters were lobbed onto the deck, water hoses were trained on the bridge windows and engine exhaust stack. A gangplank was lowered and the SWAT squad, armed with handguns, commando knives and crow-bars, ran across. The bow of the Sir John A. Macdonald towering over us was lined with Mounties holding automatic rifles. A couple of helicopters hovered over the scene. The SWAT squad was fast. In 5 minutes we were all handcuffed and lined up on deck.”

  After being transported to Sydney, Nova Scotia, in the unheated hold of the icebreaker, the prisoners were then flown by military aircraft to Gaspé, where they were jailed and charged with violating the Seal Protection Regulations. On December 21, 1983, Quebec Provincial Judge Yvon Mercier convicted Watson and his crew of, amongst other heinous crimes, unlawfully coming within half a nautical mile of the site of a seal hunt. Watson was fined $5,000 and sentenced to fifteen months in jail. His chief engineer was fined $4,000 and three months. The other crew members were fined $3,000 each. Sea Shepherd II, valued at $250,000, was confiscated.

  By way of contrast, during this same spring eight Nova Scotia lobster fishermen chased Fisheries protection officers off two patrol boats, which they then burned and sank. Charged with piracy, the eight were given suspended sentences and ordered to perform community service in lieu of paying fines or damages.

  The results of the 1983 spring “cull” did not bode well for the “seal management” policies of Fisheries and Oceans. For the first time since 1946, none of the super-efficient vessels of Norwegian registry appeared on the scene. Only two Canadian vessels, one of which was under charter to Fisheries and Oceans, reached the Front whelping patches. No new markets opened up. It was obvious to anyone with half an eye that the repugnance generated by years of protest against the whitecoat slaughter was now so pervasive that neither new markets nor a revival of the old could be looked for in the foreseeable future. Their warehouses bulging with unsold pelts, the Norwegians understood this all too well and so made good on their warning that they would pay only half the 1982 prices for 1983 pelts. In fine, total landings of harp seals from Gulf and Front together amounted to little more than a third the number landed the previous year.2