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The following
is excerpted from "Sea of Slaughter" (1984) by Farley Mowat, |
| Dotars and Horseheads continued... Since 1981, I have been conducting annual assessments of dotar and horsehead populations in representative parts of eastern Canada. Places I am unable to visit in person are surveyed for me by competent naturalists. What follows is a representative sampling. During visits to the Grand Barachois on the island of Miquelon reaching back to the late 1950s, I have seen as many as 300 horseheads and dotars, mostly the former, gathered together during their mid- summer convocations. In 1983 four observers were able to find no more than a hundred seals of both species during two days of observation, and some of these were probably counted twice. There has been and still is a brisk trade in the jaws of horseheads illegally killed on this French island and smuggled into Newfoundland or Nova Scotia where bounty is paid, no questions asked. I summered on the Magdalen Islands during the 1960s and early 1970s and spent many hours watching horseheads there. In the early sixties they werer more or less unmolested and were so tolerant of human beings that, on one occasion, I was able to approach a heerd indolently sunbathing on a beach by swimming toward them and then crawling up on shore while pretending to be a seal myself. It was a somewhat chastening experience to find myself almost cheek by jowl with thirty of so adult horseheads who, at that close range, bulked gigantic in my timorous view. when a low-flying aircraft spooked them and sent the herd galumphing into the sea. I was momentarily terrified, not of being bitten, but of being flattened as by a herd of steamrollers. However, they avoided my prone body with deliberate ease. When I first saw the Magdalens, the horeshead population there numbered several hundred and was slowly increasing. Introduction of the bounty and application of the "cull" has now virtually wiped them out in an orgy of destruction that disgusted Jacques Cousteau when he visited the archipelago in 1979. Complaints by tourists about the stench from seal carcasses on the beaches of Prince Edward Island have been commonplace for several years. One stretch of beach became so unsafe for human visitors, because of the ricocheting bulllets fired at seals, that the federal authorities, under pressure from the island's tourist board, were forced to forbid bounty hunting there during the tourist season. Nevertheless, our most recent survey recorded only nineteen horseheads and two dotars along nearly 100 miles of the island's beaches-and five of these were dead, of bullet wounds. Micmac Indians used to gather every autumn throughout most of the last century on Miscou Island to hunt seals for food and clothing. Grey seal were still common ther in 1965. Durning a recent visit by one of my confreres, not a single seal was to be found. He was told by a local fisherman that "about a dozen" had been killed the previous year, but they were now so scarce that nobody bothered to go after them. During the past several years I have lived on the southeast coast of Cape Breton Island. When I first went there, it was not unusual to see twenty of thirty horseheads from the window of my house on almost any given summer day. Now I count myself lucky to see two or three alive in any given month. And yet... On January 26, 1984, the toronto Globe and Mail published an article headed: "Seals making comeback, scientists believe." It contained the follow assertions: "Fisheries researchers agree there are more seals today than in the recent past. 'The population of grey seals has increased dramatically' in the past 10 or 15 years, said Wayne Stobo, a [federal government] expert on grey and harbour seals...as human killing declined, the number of sharks also apparently dropped in northern Atlantic waters, Mr. Stobo said. So seal populations are growing...Fisheries officials are under increasing pressure to cull herds to regulate seal populations, said Dan Goodman, senior policy planning advisor of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. estimates of the total population of grey seals range between 30,000 and 60,000..." When governments lie, they do so with conviction. Of the many scientists specializing in seals with whom I have talked, none believes there are more seals alive today than in the recent or the distant past. Not one considers sharks a major or even significant predator on seals in North Atlantic waters. Not even the most optimistic believes the grey seal population in Canadian waters exceeds 30,000, and some estimate less than half of that. One wryly suggested that Mr. Goodman may have been "absent-mindedly" thinking of the entire existing world population of the species! Occasional
ray of light penetrate the murk. In July of 1983 the Parliamentary Committee on
Seal and Sealing, an officcial advisory body to Fisheries and Oceans, recommended
to Pierre de Bane, LeBlanc's successor, "that the culling of grey seals be
stopped, since the committee sees no This blunt recommendation, coupled with the disastrous consequences to Canada of the massive anti-harp sealing campaign of that year, seems to have had some effect. Early in 1984 the department announced that only 300 pups would be "culled" this year. However, the cessation of mass slaughter at the rookeries is only for this one year. It is no more than a tactical move that does not alter the overriding strategy of extinction that the Department of Fisheries and OCeans continues to pursue. And the bounty kill will continue as before. Futhermore, there is reason to believe that, in southern New Brunswick, it has been unoffically expanded to include dotars once again. A carefully orchestrated attempt is being made, nominally by the "independent" fisherman's organizations, to have the bounty increased. other proposals, which I believe originate with Fisheries and Oceans, are now being publicly reflected back to it. They include the suggestion that Canada do as Ireland has done and sell grey seal hunting safaris to foreign spotsmen. East-coast fishing organizations are also clamouring for a "public seal hunt." Special prizes will be awarded to the good citizens who make the largest "score" (read:kill), and a festival will be held to celebrate those who have "helped Canada get rid of this growing threat to our fisheries." The shape of things intended is clearly revealed in a Canadian Press release dated May 14, 1984. "Seal cull urgent, Ottawa told. The Nova scotia and federal Governments have held discussions for several months on a possible cull of grey seals, according to provincial Fisheries Minister John Leefe. "Mr. Leefe said on Friday the seals are eating about 1.5-million tonnes of cod off the east Coast annually and spreading a parasite which reduces the value of the fish. Because of the sealworm infestation, processors have refused to buy cod caught near Sable Island, a major breeding grounds for grey seals. [Italics mine] "Mr. Leefe said the Nova Scotia Government wants a kill organized quickly but Ottawa is unwilling because it fears adverse publicity. Commerical seal hunts off Newfoundland and Quebec have resulted in campaigns by anti-sealing groups to have consumers in campaigns by anti-sealing groups to have consumers in Britain and the United States boycott Canadian products. " 'Ottawa and four Atlantic provinces should take part in the cull,' Mr. Lefee said. "He said Ottawa 'would be delighted' if the Nova Scotia Government dealt with the problem unilaterally but that the province doesn't have the power to do so. The grey seal population, estimated at a few thousand 20 years ago, now has increased to about 100,000, Mr. Leefe said." It seems brutally apparent that the continuing survival of dotars and horseheads in Canadian waters will depend, not on the enlightened and honest policies applied by government departments their patrons and lackeys, but on such independent conservation organizations such as may take up the battle on behalf of the grey seal. register
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reason of justification for continuing the cull. This is in addition to our reiteration
that the bounty system is inhumane and useless as a control technique."