Seal Wars

Christopher English is a history lecturer at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland and a recent law-school graduate.

The seal wars described here contend for the hearts and minds of the many decent uninformed men and women in North America and Europe who, by stages fascinated, bewildered, and outraged, have responded to the “slaughter” of twelve-day-old “weeping” whitecoat “baby” seals. Torn from their mothers and butchered by club-swinging Newfoundlanders, Magdalen Islanders, and Québecois in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and at “the Front” off Labrador and northern Newfoundland each March, the seals have been characterized in print, film, and television as the innocent victims of a barbarous marriage of blood lust and economic greed in the service of a fur industry whose raison d’être is to cater to the conspicuous consumption of the idle rich.

In truth, the war has been no contest, as self-proclaimed ecological interest groups, by their own account altruistically dedicated to the rescue of endangered species, have excelled at raising funds, disseminating propaganda, and attracting the visceral loyalty of thousands of supporters. The means by which they have achieved their successes (the Marine Mammals Protection Act in the United States, the end to the annual cull of white coats, and the European Economic Community’s ban on the importation of seal products) are here subjected to rational analysis and passionate rebuttal. Henke’s account of the life cycle of the seal is admirably informed, spare, and persuasive in laying bare the anthropomorphic claims of spokesmen for Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (aka Brian Davies), which ascribe human characteristics and emotions to seals. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she offers an incisive expose of the narrow and intolerant ethnocentricity of those who attack the seal fishery. In short, by knowingly propagating false information, the anti-sealing movement can be accused of cynically manipulating, often for its own pecuniary gain, the honest sympathies of sincere members of the public. They, as evidenced by their letters of concern and protest to Ottawa, are, in the author’s view, the real victims of the seal wars.

Partisan and, on the whole, persuasive in this debate, Henke is not reluctant to use overstatements that appeal as much to the emotions of her audience as do those of her opponents:

In the modern Arctic, the end result of Brian Davies’ humane new world has been hunger, cold homes, no new clothing, less gasoline for essential travel, and less ammunition in a time when the old ways, before guns, have been largely forgotten. Now that sealskin no longer works to bring in outside goods and food, the only alternative is welfare subsidy for many people who had formerly been entirely independent.... A very real human misery and deprivation is the result of the many millions of dollars donated by good Americans... and... Europeans to save harp seals. (pp. 154-5)

Greenpeace and Brian Davies here receive as good as they give! Nevertheless, this fluent and passionate statement of the case for sealing, presented in a format that is a credit to the strides in professionalism achieved in recent years by a regional publisher, is worthy of serious attention by all who are interested in a question whose ecological, economic, moral, and political dimensions tax the understanding and good will of even the most objective of observers.