Days of the Long Knives

To a point, the harp seals of maritime Canada live fortuitous lives. The gray-tan harp--so called because of a harp-shaped black blotch on its back--cannot swim at birth and dies if whelped into the frigid ocean off Labrador. By a generous natural coincidence, however, whelping occurs just as spring thaws begin to break up the winter ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Taking advantage of the breakup, pregnant cows among the 800,000 harps make their way south. Swimming down the Labrador coast and through the Strait of Belle Isle, they enter the broad Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the sheltered waters of the gulf, the herd instinctively turns the ice floes into floating maternity wards.

Females flop onto the smoother ice to bear their offspring. The newborn pups, plump bundles of snow-white fur, with limpid dark eyes and chic whiskers, spend a full month bleating helplessly on the ice and fattening on the richest maternal milk produced by any mammal. At the end of the month, when their fur darkens, they are ready for the water.

Stout Oak Clubs. Not all of them make it. Of the 250,000 harp-seal pups born in the gulf each year, nearly one-quarter may die at the hands of their natural enemy--man. Their white coats have long been prized for boot and glove trimmings and for fur jackets. In the gulf, a horde of hunters invade the floes on foot, by boat, on ski-equipped planes and in recent years by helicopter. Hundreds of sealers--"swilers" in the Newfoundland dialect--conduct a brief but grimly efficient slaughter. With stout oak clubs they move systematically through the herd, beating the whitecoats to death with raps on the skull. Only if a hulking 300-lb. cow seal chooses to fight for her baby will a swiler sometimes spare it. But most cows, especially the older ones, abandon their pups and escape into the water.

The killing continues until 50,000 pups, the legal limit, have been slaughtered. Then, after ten days or so, the Canadian hunters move on to "the front," the edge of the Arctic ice off Labrador, where they and Norwegian hunters slay perhaps another 200,000 seals in the course of a 13-day no-limit hunting season. In most years--this year so far has been disastrous for the hunters because of patch ice--fishermen and farmers from the Atlantic provinces can hope to make from $600 to $1,000 for their brief moonlighting stint as swilers and thereby double their meager incomes. For Canada, the hunt results in $1,500,000 in annual exports.

Outrageously Inappropriate. A veteran swiler can complete a kill in less than a minute. The hunter, his face smeared with seal blood to cut down ice glare and prevent chapping, grabs a 60-lb. pup by a hind flipper, whacks it on its soft skull, spins the pup over, punctures the throat and then neatly skins away pelt, flippers and blubber with swift strokes of a razor-sharp knife. The process commences at dawn, continues until dark and turns the once pristine ice into an ugly palette of dirtied snow, crimson blood sprays and grotesquely skinned carcasses. Watching this month's carnage TIME Correspondent Dick Duncan concluded: "Somehow in the savagely beautiful surroundings of the ice pack shimmering in the sun, the industrialized slaughter of 50,000 helpless and incredibly cuddly young animals seemed not so much cruel or unwise but simply outrageously inappropriate."

The Canadian government is having similar thoughts after four years of hostile publicity and occasional exaggerations about the hunt. In 1964, a Quebec TV crew filmed it to glorify the hardy Newfoundland swilers; the finished product horrified Canadians instead (although swilers angrily maintain that scenes of seals being skinned alive were staged by the TV men). Another film is being shown around the world by a determined Canadian S.P.C.A. executive named Brian Davies. It has provoked emotional stories in the world press, and something close to an international crusade to halt the hunt. Angry letters and petitions flood Ottawa, and demonstrators have besieged Canadian embassies and consulates. Among the protesters are Americans obviously unaware that the U.S. sanctions hunters who annually club or shoot 120,000 seals in the Pribiloff Islands of Alaska. Boycotts have seriously affected sales of all varieties of seal furs, and sealskin prices. The income of Canadian Eskimos, who depend on pelt sales for a livelihood, has dropped in five years from $750,000 to $95,000.

Deer Hunting Is Worse. Without success, Canadian government officials try to rebut the more emotional charges. They point out that the publicity, ironically, deals only with the gulf hunt, which is now closely patrolled and more humane than it was before 1965. Thirty inspectors were on the floes this year; they checked carcasses for skull fractures (meaning instant death, hence no skinning alive), shooed away unlicensed hunters and tallied the kill. The resulting hunt, says Fisheries Minister Jack Davis, is "probably more humane than most deer hunting." But no newsmen seem to go to the front, where Canadian swilers complain that their Norwegian competitors are still hooking pups with gaffs and skinning them alive. Nor is the annual gulf hunt, contrary to accusations, decimating the herd (although the limitless kill on the front is). Yet no matter how many explanations they make, Canadian officials are unable to quell the uproar for an elemental reason. Says one: "If we could find a way to make pup seals look like alligators, our problems would be over."

Before long, if other income can be found for impoverished hunters, Canada may turn the St. Lawrence Gulf into a seal sanctuary. Even the grizzled swilers should be relieved. They do not particularly enjoy the annual bloodbath themselves. Newfoundlanders have odd names for almost everything; a spring storm is "Sheila's brush," strong tea is "switchel" and floating ice is variously described as "growlers," "bergy hits" and "dumpers." But where biologists clinically refer to female seals as cows, the craggy Newfoundlanders never do. To them, they are always "mothers."

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