Tim Carman, HSUS

March 22: 2005: Portrait of a Breeding Ground as Natural Art
March 26: Of Seal Pups and Canine Pups
March 29: The Thick, Deadening Sound of the Seal Hunt
March 30: The Gulf Ice Pans—Where Rhetoric Goes to Die
April 1: Swing First, Ask Questions Later – If Ever
April 4: The Cruel Absurdity and Utter Importance of Observing a Seal Hunt

March 22, 2005: Portrait of a Breeding Ground as Natural Art

(photo: HSUS)

By Tim Carman

MAGDALEN ISLANDS, QUEBEC, March 22—The harp seals' breeding ground off the coast here is a world in motion. The ice floes, some as large as small towns, float imperceptibly as you stand on them. Spike your walking stick into the hard-packed snow that covers these thick slabs of ice and then fix the tip of the stick on some point on the horizon (if you can find anything on the pale-blue horizon that's fixed). You'll find, in a matter of minutes, that the fixed point has moved.

This simple test confirms what our ice guide, our pilots, and our local consultant constantly warn us about: We are not on solid ground. We are, in fact, standing on a patch of ice, perhaps 22 inches thick, that's floating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, many miles from any sense of earthly safety. You must respect the ice's volatility and fragility. Humans, unlike the male harp seals who perform synchronized ballets in open leads of water that wind past these floes, would not find anything playful about these waters, which can be as cold as 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

For centuries, this isolated area provided protection to harp seal females about to give birth, but sometime in the early 16th century, European fishing settlers began killing these animals for food and fur. Some 500 years later, seal hunters have a different motivation—they're trying to pocket some extra cash between fishing seasons. Sealers also have far better tools at their fingertips then their 16th century counterparts. Powerful ice-breaking boats and sophisticated aerial-spotting techniques allow hunters to pinpoint and access seals with relative ease. This year, the combination of high-tech equipment and old-time brutality will translate into more than 300,000 dead seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of them will be pups less than three months old.

On this Tuesday morning, as The HSUS's team of videographers, photographers, and writers stands on an ice floe, about 30 miles west of the Maggies, it's difficult to imagine that, in a week, a boat will drop a ramp right here and a dozen sealers will descend upon this frozen slab to begin their butchery. One local authority, a former sealer himself, told me that a single boat of hunters could kill and skin all the young seals on this pan of ice in about 15 minutes.

As I stand here watching the seal pups sleep and sun themselves, their mothers silently popping their heads above the nearby water line to make sure their babies are safe, I search for a metaphor that might resonate with those who will never get to witness this unfathomable cycle of beauty and death. In a week this floating piece of minimalist art will be streaked red with blood and dotted with rotting seal corpses, and a few bewildered survivors who will begin life without thousands of their companions.

I think, Conducting a seal hunt on this stark, icy canvas is like walking into the MoMA in New York and throwing buckets of blood on the great works of minimalist art. But then I think, No, that doesn't even come close to capturing it. To make the metaphor more apt, you'd have to kill the artists, too. Ultimately, I come to the conclusion that metaphors could never work in this case; nothing I can think of compares to this dichotomy: the rich, monochromatic hues of harp seal life and the dull, painful thuds of the sealers' clubs.

Ice Sculptures

You spend a lot of time in helicopters looking for seals. These trips provide you with mental space to think about the vistas below. To some, the endless expanse of ice may seem monotonous. But to my mind, the ice and the water that surrounds it and impacts it from below work together to make some of the most gorgeous, abstract expressions I've ever seen.

The helicopter pilots tell me that a massive storm, about two weeks ago, caused huge underwater disruptions in the area, breaking up the ice pans like so much freeway concrete during an earthquake. I can see the damage. Ice pans have cracked and split apart, leaving what one old-timer calls "cakes," small pieces of ice that no one dares to walk on. Despite their dangerousness, these cakes huddle together and form a most breathtaking mosaic when viewed from a thousand feet in the air. It looks like the world's largest smashed windshield, dusted lightly with snow.

As we approach the pan, where about 20 babies are beginning to molt their white coats, you see seals scampering along the ice, their front flippers pulling them along as their tapered backsides fishtail in the snow. From the air, they look like amoebas aimlessly moving about in a gigantic white Petri dish.

Once I'm on the ground, however, I see the pups take on personalities as distinct as snowflakes. Some seem shy, some curious, some playful, some needy. The shy ones will either paddle away from you or bury their heads in the snow, ostrich-like, as if the very act makes them invisible to these strange humans who need florescent orange survival suits to deal with the sub-zero temperatures and bone-rattling winds.

No matter their personality, the pups have developed a bond with the ice. Because the pups have not yet learned to swim—that will come weeks later—they must rely on the ice as a temporary home. The conditions of the northwest Atlantic—high winds, fierce snowstorms, smashing ice floes—don't always make that home hospitable, but the seals have learned to adapt to what nature gives them.

And one thing that nature provides is a pressure ridge. Pressure ridges are formed when two ice pans slam into each other; the weakest spot of a pan, usually the center, will then collapse, creating a jagged line of massive ice blocks stacked on top of the pan like so many scattered dominoes. The baby seals seem to use these ridges for protection from the elements; some slide their blubbery, liquidy bodies into alcoves formed under these gigantic slabs of ice; their warm skin eventually smoothes a bowl in the ice custom-made for their bodies.

Pressure ridges can take on dazzling formations, every bit as beautiful as modern sculpture. These ice sculptures even have their own natural lighting, the source of which was a mystery to the locals I talked to. One pilot suspected the dark navy-blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence caused this natural phenomenon, but whatever its cause, the pressure ridges appear to be lit from underneath. The bottom of almost every jagged hunk of ice glows the most stunning shade of turquoise. When a baby seal curls up next to these formations, his ivory fur resting next to the unexpected burst of color, you stop dead in your tracks from its beauty. Then the seal turns his head toward you, two almond-shaped black eyes and a black coal nose against that white fur, and you wonder if you're dreaming. Something this graceful somehow doesn't seem real.

Then you look up at one of the slabs of ice jutting straight up from the pressure ridge, and you notice that it resembles a tombstone. Your dream state quickly evaporates in these sub-zero temperatures. You're reminded of what's to come: a merciless, graceless seal hunt.

Tim Carman is the managing editor of hsus.org.

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March 26: Of Seal Pups and Canine Pups

(photo: HSUS)

By Tim Carman

After nearly an hour of searching in our two rented helicopters, we finally spot an ice pan with a healthy number of harp seal pups on it. Wildlife photographer Brian Skerry, who has covered this icy terrain many times before, agrees that the location should serve our purposes: to document the seal nursery in the days before the 2005 Canadian hunt.

Once that decision is made, I can feel my heart start to race. Unlike Skerry or our pilots or our resident seal hunt expert, Rebecca Aldworth, I have never witnessed harp seals up close, and I am anxious to make their acquaintance. I can feel my anxiousness turn to impatience as the helicopter repeatedly circles the ice pan, its tilt and speed causing the blood to rush to my head like a rickety roller coaster, while the pilots look for the best location to land.

My impatience only heightens as Aldworth, a trained ice guide, insists that we adhere to the strict protocols of navigating the pan, which means that we follow in her footsteps as she stabs at the ice with her walking stick to make sure we don't fall through a snow-covered blow hole. Child-like, I want to run, despite my bulky survival suit that affords all the maneuverability of a moon suit, straight to the nearest seal pup.

Our trek to a pup who's huddled on the far side of the pan has all the trappings of a junior high field trip—single file, quiet, and crackling with nervous energy. We stop many feet from the pup and one of our staff videographers sets down his tripod and begins to roll. After several agonizing minutes from this distance, I ask Aldworth if we can get closer, and she agrees. I'm surprised at my reaction when my eyes finally meet those of a live seal pup.

"Oh, sweetie! It's okay!"

I say this endearment with a tone and affection that startles and embarrasses me. Where does this come from? Why would I have such a reaction to a wild animal I've only seen in photos?

The answer to these questions boils down to one word: dogs.

Harp seal pups, with their large, inky and watery eyes, look at you the way stray dogs might—with what seems like a combination of fear, neediness, and teeth-clenching vulnerability. This impression is reinforced by the pups' appearance: Their faces protrude and slope into the most canine-like snout, which sprouts jet-black whiskers that curve downward and inward and frame their muzzle like quotation marks.

Aldworth has told us to approach seal pups on your knees, or even on your stomach, so you don't intimidate them with your height and bulk. Yet even with this precaution, pups usually flee at your initial presence. But if you stop and sit there, the pup will cease his movements, too, although he will typically turn his back to you, much like a dog curls into a ball on a couch, face buried deep in the cushions, when he wants privacy.

A seal pup's desire for privacy, however, is an uneasy one, and he will, like your dog back home on the sofa, constantly check over his shoulder to see if you're still there, his head twisted backward so that he appears to be viewing the world upside down. When he peeks at you, bashfully, his eyes flash tiny crescent moons of white at the corners, a sort of universal symbol of supplication with seals and dogs.

If you lie there long enough, some seal pups will surprise you. They will actually face you, amble toward you, and stare sweetly—and blankly—leaving you to wonder what's going on in those fur-covered noggins. Over a recent dinner, Dr. John Grandy, senior vice president of The HSUS's Wildlife department, recounted how, just two days earlier as he was lying on the ice, nearly a dozen seal pups started to gather around him, inching ever closer as the minutes ticked by. Aldworth explained that this huddling behavior is normal for pups, to which I responded:

"It sounds just like a puppy pile."

Sentimentalism or Evolution?

Back on dry land after my first trip to meet harp seals, I sheepishly tell Aldworth that they remind me of dogs. I'm expecting her to mock me for gross canine sentimentalism. Instead, she announces that there is indeed a legitimate connection between seals and dogs, and then, being a former Newfoundlander herself, she rolls the French name for harp seals off her tongue: loup-marin, which translates into "sea wolf."

I immediately shoot off an e-mail to The HSUS's marine mammal scientist, Dr. Naomi Rose, who explains that the "evolutionary origins of seals and seal lions is a bit murky." She says that seals definitely "belong to the same taxonomic category as dogs," but cautions that "they may have more in common with otters." And with that jump start—and the cautious admonition not to assume that these "evolutionary connections are responsible for behavior similarities like huddling"—Rose wishes me good luck on my research.

As Rose implies with her e-mail, the evolutionary origins of seals is controversial among those who theorize about such matters—well, except apparently for officials at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. On the DFO's web site, under the harp seal background page, the agency forthrightly says: Seals "apparently originated in the northern hemisphere and are derived from a stock of land-based flesh-eating mammals. The Norwegian name for the harp seal, Selhund, which means sea dog, and the French name, loup-marin, or sea wolf, aptly reflect the evolutionary origin of the harp seal."

Other scientists remain more skeptical on seal origins. Some taxonomists can't even decide what order in which to place pinnipeds, a group of animals that encompasses both eared seal and true (or earless) seal families, the latter of which includes harp seals. Some want to place pinnipeds under their own order Pinnipedia, while others claim pinnipeds do not merit a separate order and should be a suborder under order Carnivora, which includes dogs, cats, and bears.

Similar arguments play out over seal origins. Some scientists suggest the two families, eared seals and true seals, evolved from different land-based ancestors who took to the sea millions of years ago to take advantage of the food-rich waters (and, perhaps, to avoid predators). These scientists say the former family likely evolved from a bear-like or dog-like ancestor in the North Pacific, while the latter family (which includes harps) descended from an otter-like carnivore in the North Atlantic. And then there is the small group of scientists that believe all pinnipeds may have evolved from a common, bear-like ancestor more than 25 million years ago.

Who to believe? Who knows.

I personally like the mythological origin of seals that Marianne Riedman spells out in her 1990 book, Pinnipeds: Seals, Sea Lions, and Walruses:

…How seals evolved has always been perfectly clear to the Inuit Eskimos. The story they tell of the creation of seals revolves around Nuliajuk…. also known as Sedna the Eskimo girl. The Netsilik Eskimos worshipped Nuliajuk as their most powerful spirit—the mother of all the animals and the mistress of the sea and land. As one version of the story goes, Sedna and her father were at sea when some seabirds whom they had offended created a terrible storm. The father panicked and flung his daughter overboard as an offering to the birds. As Sedna clung to the edge of the boat, her father cut off her fingers, which, falling into the ocean, were transformed into seals and whales. Ever since, Sedna, or the spirit Nuliajuk, has controlled the weather and the seals, taking the animals away from the hunters when she is angry.

I like to think that Sedna is foot-stompingly mad right now. Mad about how many seals are killed in Canada, mad about how they are killed, and mad that the very animals she created are treated with such selfish contempt by commercial hunters. Perhaps she will take the animals away from sealers this year.

Tim Carman is the managing editor of hsus.org.

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March 29: The Thick, Deadening Sound of the Seal Hunt

(photo: HSUS)

By Tim Carman

THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, Tuesday, March 29—Many have seen the graphic footage of hunters whacking young harp seals, but few have stood on an ice floe in the Gulf, ankle-deep in slush, ice, and water, and actually heard the sound of a hakapik striking a pup's skull.

It's the most deadening sound you'll ever hear—and one we heard repeatedly today on an icy stretch of water about 20 miles southeast of the Madgalen Islands, where dozens of boats dropped ramps to begin a slaughter that will account for more than 300,000 dead baby seals before it's all over.

The HSUS Seal Watch team flew into the prime hunting zone at around 7:30 this morning, Eastern time. Hunters had already been in full swing for more than two hours, and the evidence lay there in large, red pools and crimson streaks as our helicopters buzzed over ice floe after ice floe. Every boat anchored near a pan had a massive, semi-circle of flesh and blood on either its port or starboard side. From the air it looked as though the ships had just given birth.

Their crew members, of course, had done just the opposite. And they did their grisly jobs with startling swiftness, if not efficiency.

Our videographers, photographers, and observers moved into position near a wide channel of water where several small ice cakes floated between larger pans, every cake sprinkled with silvery, pepper-flaked seals doing what they do best: quietly sleeping together. It was a miserable day to document carnage. Although the air temperature hovered in the relatively balmy 40-degree Fahrenheit area, the winds blew at more than 30 mph. Even worse, a light rain converted into a driving sleet within an hour of our arrival on the ice.

These conditions forced our photographers and videographers to wrap their expensive instruments in custom-made raincoats and jury-rigged baggies. They had brought along special tissues to wipe off lenses, but when those became wet and worthless, they were forced to use whatever wasn't soaked: hand towels, gloves, even garments under their survival suits.

Bad weather notwithstanding, we were primed for our first encounter with sealers. A small dinghy carrying three hunters approached an ice cake dotted with less than ten seals. These men were drab in appearance: outfitted in green khaki pants and green khaki parkas; one even had what looked like green khaki overalls strapped on. The only burst of color, oddly enough, came from their gloves, which were bright fluorescent orange. If they had been holding short florescent-orange sticks, they could have been directing airplanes, not killing seals.

The hakapik was the sealers' weapon of choice, and they brandished this thuggish instrument with authority, if not skill. They pounced on the ice cake and finished their work in short order, but it was not their swiftness that horrified me most. It was that sound.

Naomi Rose, The HSUS's marine mammal scientist, says that harp seals have more elongated skulls than humans. Perhaps because of this shape, harp seal skulls do not "crack" like human heads when struck with a blunt instrument. No, harp seal skulls sound much worse.

When the first hakapik slammed into the head of a seal pup in front of us, it landed with a back-stiffening thwick— brief, thin, and brittle, the sound of a lobster leg being cracked. The second blow to the same animal fell with a deadening thwunk—final, thick, and deep. The second sound was produced, in part by the hakapik striking the brain and skull, but also by the seal's head slamming into the ice and snow, which produced a full-stop thwump, the icy surface muffling the blow. It's a sound that will haunt you in your sleep.

(photo: Hsus)

The horror film soundtrack didn't stop there. Within a span of minutes, our team encountered two beater seals who had been struck, but not killed. Both were left on the ice by sealers—in direct violation of Canada's marine mammal regulations. The first seal, a young silky black beater with mottled black and white splotches on his belly, was the very definition of a survivor, struggling to pull himself into the water with only one working flipper and two eyes sealed shut in apparent pain.

But it was the second beater who broke my heart. He was nestled next to another young beater, already long dead, as though still comforted by his companion's semi-warm body. The injured seal had suffered a gash above his left eye, apparently the spot where the blunt end of the hakapik struck him. His eyes, like the other seal's, were squeezed shut, and his small body was struggling for air, his iridescent silver sides inflating and deflating with every belabored breath.

As difficult as that was to witness, I melted more when I heard him breathe. With flared nostrils encrusted with crystallized blood—and lungs doubtlessly filled with still warm blood—he produced a sound that resembled one heard at every fast-food joint in America: the sound of air, and a small amount of liquid, being sucked through a straw near the bottom of a soda cup. The quotidian sound from Food Court America coming from a dying harp seal was simply too much to take, a reminder that human consumption rules the world, whether in the mall or on the ice floes of Canada.

Finally, as the best composers will tell you, the absence of sound is as important as the presence of it. And on the ice pans in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there's an absence that might surprise you: the sound of terrified harp seals.

When the aforementioned trio of sealers approached their targets on this black Tuesday, the animals rarely uttered a complaint. I saw nearly 50 seals killed, yet only once did I hear something resembling a cry for help—a sort of guttural, staccato sound that might have even been antagonistic in intent. As the hunters stalked them, the seals, one by one, would raise their heads high into the air and arch their necks backward into a C shape, their mouths wide open. But they never uttered a sound before that deadening thwunk hit them.

And that's why we have to speak for them.

Tim Carman is the managing editor of hsus.org.

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March 30: The Gulf Ice Pans—Where Rhetoric Goes to Die

(photo: HSUS)

CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND—The narrow conference room in the Delta Prince Edward hotel in downtown Charlottetown has all the warmth of a motor vehicle registration office, and the two men sitting at a folding table on Monday afternoon, both representatives of Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, don't look happy. Perhaps that's because of the people sitting in the chairs at their "press conference."

Most are representatives from animal protection organizations, including 10 staffers or freelancers associated with The HSUS.

The Canadian government and the animal activists are squaring off again over a familiar subject: the annual harp seal hunt, which this year will claim the lives of more than 300,000 baby seals on the ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While this conference room showdown doesn't begin to compare to the anti-sealing movement's heyday in the 1970s, when a radical handcuffed himself to a pile of seal pelts as it was loaded onto a boat or when two daring souls blocked a massive icebreaking ship by literally standing in front of it, the scene does echo the past in one significant way:

The government sounds scared.

The press conference begins with a statement read, in French and English, by the "acting communications director for the Quebec region," who seems to be perspiring a lot and taking long pauses to gulp down water. His statement is a sort of DFO Greatest Hits package, stuffed with the same "facts" that DFO Minister Geoff Regan has been pushing to editorial boards across Canada.

In the weeks leading up to the hunt, Canadian officials have been asking citizens to swallow a load of seal meat (which the locals inform me smells and tastes absolutely awful). DFO officials have been telling people that the hunt can represent up to 25% of a sealer's annual income, that the hunt is conducted in a "safe and humane manner," that it is "sustainable and economically viable," that the harp seal population is "healthy and abundant, nearly triple what it was in the 1970s," that the hunt is "closely monitored and tightly regulated," and that seal pups are "self-reliant, independent animals."

Since the DFO's "facts" are apparently not enough to sway Canadians, Regan has also been amping up the rhetoric against animal protection organizations. He's preyed upon working-class anger over the collapse of the cod fisheries (and the widely debunked theory that the seals are eating all the fish and prohibiting a cod recovery) by boldly claiming that animal groups are trying to take away sealers' "time-honored traditions" for the purpose of lining their own pockets. Regan has even said that the Canadian seafood boycott, launched by the Protect Seals Network, "will do nothing to stop the seal hunt and will only serve to add to the level of unemployment in an area already suffering economic hardship."

Setting the Record Straight

Monday's press conference provides some of those same animal groups with an unexpected chance to return fire at the DFO in what has become the most heated media debate in recent seal hunt history. The conference room is equipped with a microphone stand and a small patch of carpet where attendees—clearly the DFO had hoped for journalists, not animal advocates—can ask their questions. But when Rebecca Aldworth, The HSUS director of Canadian Wildlife Issues, steps up to the microphone, the area quickly turns into a pulpit. And she's not afraid to play the bully.

"I have just a couple of questions," Aldworth addresses Roger Simon, area director for the DFO, who handles all the inquiries during the press conference. "My first one is, Why is the Canadian government acting as spokesperson for an industry? As a Canadian I find it pretty reprehensible that Canada's logo, if you will, is sitting all over a press packet that contains a lot of misinformation. You say here that you encourage the public to base their opinions on fact, but you don't give them the facts. What you give them is a PR spin for [the sealing] industry."

Aldworth actually has several questions, each of which is designed to force the DFO to modify its "facts." First off, she wants the DFO to admit that the current harp seal population—agency officials love to spout that the estimated 5.2 million seals is "nearly triple what it was in the 1970s"—represents a recovery from an all-time population low, not an explosion of harp seals suddenly in need of a cull. Second, she wants the DFO to say, on the record, that its enforcement officers will strictly enforce the marine mammal regulations, particularly those on humane killing, and not just harass observers about their permits. And, finally, she wants the DFO to admit that the Canadian government provides subsidies to sealers, which officials routinely deny, including breaking the ice for sealers with Coast Guard ships.

Simon is masterful at deflecting the questions. He's clearly studied top industry and government evasion tactics; he could stay on message while being swarmed by grasshoppers. Aldworth coaxes hardly any admissions from him, though Simon does seem resigned to admit that Canadian grants to the sealing industry are "subsidies."

Simon only trips once, and he's clearly not aware of it. When a Dutch journalist asks him to comment on a potential ban of seal products in Holland and the larger European Union, Simon smugly responds that most seal products are exported to Asia and Russia. "I don't think the Dutch market is much of a major player in the seal industry."

But when he is asked to comment on Legal Sea Food's decision not to purchase fish from Newfoundland until the seal hunt is stopped—or to comment on the 96,000 people who have signed The HSUS's boycott of Canadian seafood —Simon suddenly clams up. He says he doesn't comment on "trade matters."

His newfound reticence speaks volumes: The Canadian government is apparently scared about losing any part of its multi-billion dollar export business in seafood. After all, Canada's beef industry has already been crippled by a U.S. ban on its products.

Where the Rhetoric Meets the Ice

The day after the press conference—the opening day of the 2005 hunt—the HSUS team watches dozen of those "self-reliant, independent seals" lie there helplessly as sealers crush their skulls with hakapiks. Many of these baby seals have not yet learned to swim, a fact that makes a mockery of the DFO's carefully selected words about their self-reliance and independence. Even calling this a hunt seems perverse; it implies a chase, but as St. Johns writer Ray Guy noted in his 1999 article, "Seal Wars," "killing seals looks as challenging as stomping on snails on a garden path."

The ice pans in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which the young seals call home until they're either killed or swim off to Greenland, is the place where rhetoric goes to die. Press statements, interviews, politicking, and spin control all have their place in the course of human events, but when you're staring at one severely injured seal pup who's desperately trying to keep his nose above water because he knows he'll drown if he doesn't, all those words seem as empty as this ice.

It may not be fashionable to be an American these days, but on Tuesday morning, as each swing of the hakapik found its intended target, I thanked the States for the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Passed in 1972, the Act is, as The HSUS's marine mammal scientist Naomi Rose says, a "model of precautionary management." It, she notes, "placed all marine mammals, regardless of whether or not they were endangered or threatened, under the Act's protection, because it was recognized that marine mammals are difficult to study and count and damage could be inflicted on populations long before it became obvious to researchers or managers."

That sounds like wisdom, not rhetoric.

Tim Carman is the managing editor of hsus.org.

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April 1: Swing First, Ask Questions Later – If Ever

(photo: HSUS)

By Tim Carman

THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, April 1, 2005—The sealer turned to us, hakapik in hand, and spat out his words in a nasal, high-pitched voice drenched with a Newfoundland accent. Sealing, he shouted in between profanity-laced directives, is our tradition. He cursed that our Seal Watch team had no right to take away this tradition, or even to observe him, as he crushed one seal pup skull after another, leaving each animal to perform a sort of death dance in a puddle of its own blood.

If this is a tradition, I thought, it is an unthinking and uncritical one.

Minutes before this confrontation, our team had landed on an ice pan littered with seal carcasses, hundreds of them, each tossed aside like gum wrappers. The hunters had sliced from each animal the only part of value to them: the pelt. The rains and gale-force winds from the previous two days had frozen the skinned seals in place, an open-air morgue in which the Gulf's temporary ice floes served as an ignominious cooler.

Former hunter Michael J. Dwyer, in his 1999 book, Over the Side, Mickey, claims that it takes an experienced sealer "about two minutes" to skin a harp seal beater. Dwyer writes: "It involves three shifts around the profusely bleeding body. It involves placing one's face into the cloud of pungent, warm steam that rises from the blood-dripping conglomerate of entrails that could weigh sixty repulsive pounds. It involves grabbing the black, warm, twitching carcass, lifting it and tossing it down in the swath."

Assuming they were an experienced team of hunters, the group probably spent ten hours skinning the 300-plus seals on this pan. To put this in business terms, it took one eight-hour day, plus two hours of overtime, to transform these shimmering, silver-and-black beaters into the slabs of raw flesh now locked into place by the ice, soon to be lost forever to the sea.

When alive, every harp seal has a unique personality, but on this floating cemetery, all had been reduced to identical, oblong carcasses—blackened, crimson-streaked flesh and ivory fat, entrails spilling from beneath their rib cages like bloated, three-day-old noodles. The only thing that differentiated one carcass from another was the degree to which the seal's skull has been crushed.

Some seal pup heads were missing only a small chunk of skull, as if a veterinarian had removed it to slice out a tumor. But others barely had any skull at all; their heads literally looked like they had exploded. These differences in cranial damage served as a reminder of both the brute force of the hakapik and the widely varying skills of those who actually brandish these crude instruments. How many glancing blows to the head were deemed sufficient by sealers as they pulled out their skinning knives? Our team watched one seal today literally being skinned alive.

A skinned seal is difficult to look at for many reasons. Chief among them: The eyeballs remain in the carcasses. Everywhere we looked, soft, black-and-white globes peered back at us, crazy eight balls popping out of fleshy, partially intact skulls. An HSUS videographer and I had the same reaction to these dead faces: They looked like special effects props from a horror movie.

Except, of course, this was no movie. Unless you thought about it in the Clockwork Orange sense: What we saw was pure horrorshow, the aftermath of sealers who seem to go about their vicious work with the pleasure and nonchalance of the teenage droogs in Anthony Burgess' 1963 novel.

Did these hunters check their brains and hearts at the boat deck? I could think of no other reason why these hunters could kill, skin, and discard 300 beautiful beaters. Even just one moment of reflection, a single pause to think what it means to slice open a warm blubbery seal like a loaf of bread, and they'd have to realize they were standing in the middle of a real-life horror flick.

But sealing is tradition, and like most traditions, it goes unquestioned by those who practice it. The very nature of tradition implies a lack of critical analysis. This is tradition. It's what we've always done.

Tradition In Full Swing

Our two rented helicopters landed on a stretch of ice that resembled concrete after an 8.4 quake. Giant blocks of ice jutted from the pans at every conceivable angle, each one lacquered with frozen rainwater. The conditions, needless to say, made traversing the ice like trying to climb up a slide dripping with cooking oil. Even with spiky crampons buckled to our boots we found it challenging to catch up with sealers as they raced about the ice.

But we did meet up with the aforementioned Newfoundlander, who was none too pleased that we decided to turn our attention to his activities. He tried to skip to ice pans that required an even further hike on our part, but we relentlessly pursued him, digital cameras, tripods, and video equipment in tow. We observed him beat several seals to death, their blood occasionally spraying his pants legs after each swing, but he quickly grew weary of our presence. Several times he dropped his hakapik to his side in disgust and sighed deeply, as if our cameras were the real problem here.

Then he uttered what we had half expected from the moment we started to chase him: If you don't leave, he squeaked, I'm going to break your legs.

We took the threat seriously. After all, just the day before, anti-sealing activist Paul Watson claimed that a crew member on his ship, the Farley Mowat, was "smashed in the face and injured" by sealers. Our team leader, Rebecca Aldworth, had warned us that sealers were in no mood to play nice with observers. All the signs pointed to further conflict.

The threat turned into action within minutes. The sealer marched toward us methodically, purposefully, each quick step in our direction raising our adrenaline levels. His primary intent seemed clear—to hurt us or at least scare us—but his secondary goal may have been merely to prevent us from filming. He may also have been trying to crowd us, in order to make it appear as if we had violated the rule requiring observers to keep a ten-meter cushion between themselves and sealers. Violating this rule could lead the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans to revoke our license.

Our equipment, the busted-up pans, and our lack of familiarity with the ice hindered our escape. Finally, the sealer caught Andrew Plumbly, volunteer coordinator for the Seal Watch team and director of Global Action Network. Trapped by a pressure ridge that prevented him from retreating any farther, Plumbly was forced to stand toe to toe with the sealer who, when he reached Plumbly, raised his hakapik and twice demanded the camera in his hand. Plumbly flatly refused and added, in his impeccable South African lilt, that if the sealer hit him, he would face jail time under Canada's criminal codes. The sealer, spewing curses, backed down.

But only for a while. Within thirty minutes, he returned with a blood-splattered buddy, and they pursued us again. This time, they didn't stop until they had chased us back to our helicopter, a good quarter-mile away. Safely near our choppers, we watched the sealers make an abrupt right turn and focus their attention on a nearby pan, which was bereft of seals. A Canadian Coast Guard helicopter circled above us, surveying the unfolding scene.

As we stood by our helicopters and nervously recounted the events that had just transpired, the sealers strutted back past us, smug over their victory in sending us packing. With a hakapik slung over his shoulder, one of them mumbled, in a tone befitting South Park: Ha-ha, made you run.

That, I thought, is the level of unthinking, juvenile behavior we're dealing with at the seal hunt. Then I turned to some colleagues and said out loud, "Next you thing you know, they're going to moon us." We all laughed.

Later that afternoon, another sealer pulled down his pants and mooned the team.

Tim Carman is managing editor of hsus.org.

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April 4, 2005: The Cruel Absurdity and Utter Importance of Observing a Seal Hunt

(photo: HSUS)

By Tim Carman

THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, April 4, 2005—The sealers pose the question frequently on the ice, but it's not a legitimate inquiry. It's a taunt, a jab, a sophomoric attempt to give us a different perspective on Canada's seal hunt.

We have a job to do here, they like to curse at our Seal Watch team. What the hell are you doing here?

Sometimes, during the course of this year's five-day hunt, which officially ended on Saturday night, I had to ask myself the same question. Observing grown men killing harp seals, over and over, would throw anyone into an existential crisis.

The rules of our observation permits are clear: You cannot interfere with the sealers during the hunt. You cannot scare away seals to prevent a hunter from killing them. You cannot rescue a seal who's injured. You cannot stand closer than ten meters to a hunter who's swinging his way across an ice pan, sending seal pups to a watery, premature grave.

All you can do is stand there and watch and record. Sometimes you can complain to officials of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but that feels as useful as…well, as standing there helplessly and watching seals being clubbed to death.

When you first see a seal's skull crushed with a hakapik, you feel this anger wash over you. You curse out loud, to no one in particular, just because something inside you has to express something. The moment cannot pass without outrage—outrage over the killing itself, and outrage over the fact that you can do nothing to stop it in that moment.

Here's the typical process: Employing helicopters, observers of the seal hunt scout for boats first, then scout to find the nearest pan of ice with live seals on it. The goal is to scramble out of our choppers and set up recording equipment before the sealers arrive with their hakapiks. We typically beat them to the seals, and while that's good for documenting the horror of the hunt, it's awful for your psyche. You actually get to spend time with the seals, get to look them in the eye, get to see how playful and funny and serious they are. You open yourself up to their charms.

Five minutes later, those seals are dead. Two minutes after that, they are skinned of their fat and pelt, their purplish red muscles still twitching on the ice after the hunters have collected their prizes.

What the hell are we doing in the middle of the sea, this vast icy harp seal whelping ground that's so inhospitable to humans?

Who's the Boss?

The hunters, of course, act like the ice is their natural habitat, not the seals'. The irony of their territorialism is lost on them, despite the fact that the sealing industry has a long history of watching the sea swallow up its kind.

Our Seal Watch team visited the ice five times during the course of the 2005 hunt. Every time, except for the first trip when it was sleeting and windy and colder than a sealer's heart, we were confronted by hunters on the ice. Their tactics were so similar that Rebecca Aldworth, HSUS's director of Canadian Wildlife Issues, believed the sealers had purposely developed the strategy to intimidate and discourage observers.

Their tactics, in their uniformity and ubiquity, certainly smacked of strategy. One attack remains particularly vivid in my mind. Four of us had staked out a pan with three seals on it. We were perched on a pressure ridge, waiting for the sealers from the boat Manon Yvon to bring their destruction our way.

About an hour earlier, we had watched one of the Manon Yvon's hunters, a young muscled man with closely cropped hair, butcher seals with unusual gusto, his swings delivered with a vicious velocity as if to misdirect his anger at us onto the animal. Once he had slaughtered his way through a small pan of seals, Aldworth cried foul—literally. She called over officers from the DFO, and wanted the sealer's permit immediately yanked for violations of the marine mammal regulations. Specifically, she wanted it yanked for violating the rule that requires a sealer to perform either a skull palpitation or an eye-blink reflex test, to make sure the pup is dead, before moving on to the next one.

The DFO officers, who were about a quarter mile away on another ice pan, somehow determined from their far-off vantage point that the sealer had indeed conformed to the rules.

Aldworth's attempt to hold the sealer to the rules clearly didn't endear her to Manon Yvon's crew. And when the DFO (and the Coast Guard) finally left in their red-and-white chopper, we found ourselves alone with the sealers. And they were in no mood for rules.

They skipped right past those three seals we were staking out—and came after us. Eight sealers, each with a hakapik and a bad attitude, charged against four observers. We had only our wits to defend ourselves. The leader of this scalping party was an older man who shouted repeatedly, You have to be ten meters from me! You have to be ten meters from me! He knew full well that we couldn't maintain that cushion as he rushed toward us.

The sealers finally drove us, like cattle, to the other members of our team. The older sealer turned his attention to Aldworth, currently the most outspoken critic of the hunt, and let her know that he wasn't afraid to smack a woman. Aldworth said she didn't doubt that, and then added, quite motherly, "You have blood on your face." The altercation ended with the old sealer knocking Aldworth's camera out of her hand, smearing the instrument with seal blood in the process.

Other members of the Seal Watch were similarly pushed, swung at or poked with hakapiks. The encounter concluded with the older sealer confronting a young man in our party, sticking a gloved, blood-soaked finger in his face and asking, "You know what you look like? My h'ass."

By the time the Coast Guard landed, about five minutes later, the damage report read something like this: three cameras splattered with blood, three team members similarly bloodied, and everyone rattled. Aldworth filed a formal complaint with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and we spent the next hour or so giving statements—and not documenting the sealers.

I couldn't help but think that the sealers got the better of this deal; we were rendered useless as observers for more than two hours as the Dudley Do-rights who "enforce" the nominal regulations of the hunt pretended to care about humane issues.

So why do we do this? Why do we willfully subject ourselves to watching beautiful animals slaughtered—and to confronting sealers with hakapiks?

We kid ourselves that one of the main reasons is to document violations of the marine mammal regulations, but as Aldworth will tell you, documentation hasn't amounted to a hill of seal blubber. She has filed more than 660 probable violations with the DFO—none of which has translated into formal charges.

But here's the thing: If we weren't there, the harm to seals could be even worse. This is a difficult argument to make, because we can't exactly speak to something we will never witness, but we hear stories and we read reports. When observers aren't around, the brutality can be staggering. During the five days of this year's Gulf hunt, I could sense that our presence changed the sealers' behavior. They would administer eye-blink tests, or re-club still squirming seals to make sure they were dead. I imagined these acts—and sometimes their theatricality made them seem exactly like acting—were performed for our benefit, to show everyone that the hunt was "humane."

The real reason we do this, strange as it sounds, is for you. You, and millions like you, will be the force that finally pressures the Canadian government to stop this annual absurdity in harp seal management. And you can only apply that force when you know the facts, when you see the cruelty and the stupidity and the viciousness for yourself.

That's why we're there.

Tim Carman is managing editor of hsus.org. (back to top)

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