Treaty at Center of Controversy Over Commercial Seal Harvest

ST. PAUL, Alaska —  Nearly 200 years ago, Russian fur traders rounded up a band of hapless Aleut natives and forcibly moved them from Alaska’s Aleutian chain north to the uninhabited Pribilof Islands, a handful of windy specks of rock in the Bering Sea. There, the Aleuts were made to harvest the great herds of the North Pacific fur seal.

Ever since, in a delicate continuation of life by two species, the Aleuts’ descendants have carried on the annual taking of the seals’ progeny as the seals return each year to their rookeries here to breed.

While the Aleuts themselves depend on the seal meat for nourishment, tens of thousands of seals have also been killed with a swift, sharp blow to the skull solely for their pelts, long sold to furriers of several nations.

But not this year.

Apparent End to Harvest

After a 10-year effort, animal protection groups, opposed to the killing of marine mammals except for natives’ subsistence, say that they have apparently succeeded in ending the commercial harvesting of the seals for their fur.

The development, they say, closes an era in the United States: the killing of marine mammals for money.

“It’s the end of the last commercial harvest of marine mammals in the United States,” Nancy Wallace, a special investigator with the Humane Society of the United States, declared here the other day. “It’s the final closing of the exploitation of marine mammals. What began in 1972 with the outlawing of the killing of whales . . . is now accomplished with the outlawing of the commercial killing of northern fur seals.”

The Humane Society and Greenpeace have thus far blocked action this year by the Senate to renew an international treaty that is intended to protect the northern fur seals--but which also allowed for the seal harvest in the Pribilofs.

This treaty-sanctioned kill of non-breeding, sub-adult males, Greenpeace and the Humane Society say, is contributing to a recent population decline of 6% a year that threatens the ultimate survival of the seal.

Need for Treaty Stressed

But their opponents, including other environmental groups, charge that without the treaty, there will be no international effort to protect the seals, random slaughter on the high seas will resume and the fur seal will dwindle toward extinction.

Moreover, they say, there is no evidence that the seal harvest is the cause of the population decline.

Both sides agree that the stakes in the dispute are nothing less than the ultimate preservation of the North Pacific fur seal.

“We’re battling over the treaty, and without the treaty, someone else is going to kill them,” says David R. Cline, regional vice president of the National Audubon Society in Anchorage. “That killing out there (in the Pribilofs) is the most scientifically regulated and humanely carried out of any I’m aware of.

“If the treaty is thrown out, there’ll be less incentive to get other nations to cooperate and to get Congress to fund the necessary research into saving the seal,” he says.

And for the 560 people of St. Paul, whose heritage is marked by Russian nameplates above the doors of their weathered frame homes and by the Russian Orthodox Church sitting on a hillside, the stakes also include their well-being and their way of life, whatever its ugly beginnings in 1787.

Concern Is for Future

“Our concern is that the fur seal is available for dozens of generations of people, not just this generation,” says Larry Merculieff, the president of the Tanadgusix Corp., the native village corporation here. “Termination of the treaty will result in a loss of international funds and cooperation for research.

“And behind all of this is our right to eat the seals. It is a staple in the winter and a supplement in the summer,” he says.

On this remote island, which is often shrouded in misting clouds, other foods are available, but expensive. St. Paul is 775 miles from Anchorage, and there is air service only four days a week--if the weather permits. In stores, ground beef is $2.50 a pound and a loaf of bread $2. An apple in a restaurant costs $1.50.

Difficult Time for Aleuts

The apparent end of commercial sealing comes at a difficult time for the Aleuts of St. Paul and nearby St. George.

Until two years ago, they had been wards of the federal government, which at one time controlled every aspect of their lives and provided many of them with their only jobs. In a place where unemployment often reached 70%, the Pribilovians were hired seasonally to conduct the seal harvest and process the pelts for the government, which then sold them.

Last year’s harvest put 85 persons to work and infused $285,000 in income into the community in six weeks.

Now, with that source of income disappearing, the Pribilovians are struggling to build a new economy based on halibut fishing and on a port to service fishing fleets and as a launching base for oil exploration in the Bering Sea.

“To eliminate the possibility of a commercial harvest (of seals) at this time, while the Aleuts are in the process of developing alternative means of employment, will place a severe burden on the Pribilof Island community,” Secretary of State George P. Shultz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month.

‘Neither Just Nor Reasoned’

“To increase the difficulties of the transition period they are now in by arbitrarily terminating the fur seal harvest would be neither just nor reasoned,” Shultz said.

But 44 senators have lined up against renewal of the treaty as “repugnant to most Americans.” Since two-thirds of the Senate are required to ratify a treaty, it remains locked in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A tentative compromise between the Aleuts of St. Paul and the animal protection groups calls for renewal of the treaty with a subsistence kill but no commercial harvest.

But differences remain. Natives here say that they need to harvest 15,000 seals for meat, while Greenpeace and the Humane Society claim several thousand is sufficient. In addition, the Aleuts want to sell the pelts from the hunt commercially, which the two groups also oppose.

The fate of a community and of a species is being argued.

Decimation Led to Action

It was an earlier decimation of the seal herds for fur, in fact, that prompted international agreement among the United States, Russia, Japan and Great Britain (acting for Canada) to control commercial sealing in 1911. When the Pribilof herds were discovered in 1786, there were an estimated 2 million to 2 1/2 million fur seals, with up to 2 million of them here on St. Paul Island alone.

By 1912, wholesale killing of both males and females on the high seas had reduced the seals’ numbers here to 240,000. Commercial harvests were suspended until 1917 and were resumed first under a quota and then under a government regulated harvest limited to non-breeding males.

The fur seals were placed under the control of the federal government, and the Aleuts became wards of the government, living in poverty and paid for years in government chits redeemable at the government store.

Fishing Industry Stymied

Travel off the islands was restricted, wages were low and civil rights were violated. Perhaps worse, their status as captive laborers prevented the development of other industries such as fishing.

In 1978, the Pribilovians of St. Paul and St. George won $8.2 million in court in damages for the abuse they sustained over the decades.

Numbers Rose in 1950s

The seals, however, Merculieff notes with some bitterness, had prospered. So successful were the international efforts to protect the seal that their numbers rose again to between 2 million and 2 1/2 million in the Pribilofs in the 1950s. In 1957, a new agreement was reached, and it has been renewed about every four years since. It has allowed for harvests ranging from 22,000 to 30,000 non-breeding males.

But a steady decline in recent years has seen the Pribilof seal herd drop to about 800,000--and about 1 million throughout the Pacific. Opponents of the treaty say it is to blame; Cline, Merculieff and others blame other factors--a harvest of females from 1963 to 1968 designed to “stabilize” the population, the entanglement of seals in ocean debris (particularly nets and packing materials) and perhaps increased fishing for pollack, on which the seals feed.

“No one knows why,” says Vivia Boe, the Greenpeace international seal coordinator from Seattle. “But we feel the commercial harvest has been an unnecessary pressure on a declining species . . . . “

But Cline of the Audubon Society says: “There’s more and more evidence it’s entanglement in fishing nets.” Without a treaty, he adds, there will be less international effort to determine the actual cause of the decline.

Could Become Easy Prey

Merculieff notes that the seals can be regarded as the second biggest fishing “nation” and without a treaty would become easy targets for fishing fleets seeking to eliminate competition for pollack.

An environmental impact statement prepared in connection with the treaty renewal notes a decline in the number of seal pups born each year even though the harvest is of non-breeding males, and the statement thus concluded that “an increase in mortality at sea,” such as entanglement, is more likely behind the population decline than the harvest.

This spring, a scientific advisory committee formed under the international treaty also rejected the commercial harvest as a cause of the population decline. It set a quota of 22,000 for the St. Paul seal harvest. Concerned about the future of the seal herd, the Pribilovians agreed to a 15,000-seal harvest for subsistence purposes--a number rejected by Greenpeace as excessive.

Without Senate action on the treaty, the federal government imposed strict emergency regulations for this summer’s subsistence hunt. The regulations appear to prevent the sale of pelts and male bones (regarded as an aphrodisiac in Asia) taken from animals killed for meat.

So on July 17, the harvest began at 5 a.m., under a cloud of controversy and unanswered questions over how many seals would be killed, and what would become of their fur.

But it is the measure of change sweeping over St. Paul that the harvest crews had to temporarily leave other jobs on the island to carry out the harvest.

Island at Full Employment

The island is at full employment, a $14-million breakwater and port, financed by the state of Alaska, are under construction and in perhaps five years, St. Paul will become a major fish processing center that could, Merculieff says, make the American fishing fleet more competitive with foreign fleets.

A $12-million trust fund, appropriated by Congress to help the island wean itself from the government-paid seal harvest, is in reserve to help finance port-related businesses. And a budding halibut fishing fleet--the first commercial fishing in St. Paul despite its opportune location--is taking hold.

“Prior to three years ago,” Merculieff says of his people’s progress, “no one here knew how to fish commercially, even though the resource was at our door.” Now there are seven commercial boats working out of St. Paul.

“We went from zero production to 148,000 pounds in 1984,” says Merculieff, “and this year we expect 250,000 pounds of halibut.”

Still, the fur seal treaty is seen here as critical to the Aleuts, whose cultural ties over time have evolved through the seal kill: the Aleut names still used in butchering, the community sharing of meat, the harvest skills that were once the highest attained in a community repressed by Russian and American governments alike.

‘Source of Cash, Meat’

“The animal protectionist people feel the seal harvest isn’t critical because the port will be functioning,” says Merculieff. “But we’ve got numerous, numerous negotiations to work out. We’re not going to be at full production for years. The seal harvest is a dependable source of cash and meat.

“We are the last defense for the seal,” Merculieff says. “We own all the land (where the seals breed). We could destroy it for profit. Thank God, the leadership wants to preserve our culture and life style . . . . We want to protect them so we can continue to use them.

“It is essential to maintain our ties with the animals and those ties are symbiotic. We become the defenders of the animals. If you sever the relationship, you cut off the last group that can defend those animals.”