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.
