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.
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.
