OCEAN MAMMAL PROTECTION WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1972 U.S. SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 1381, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Ernest F. Hollings (chairman), presiding. Present: Senators Hollings, Pastore, and Stevens. Senator HOLLINGS. The committee will come to order. We are pleased to have as our first witness the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, author of the bill concerning preservation of marine mammals. Senator Harris, we welcome you. STATEMENT OF HON. FRED HARRIS, U.S. SENATOR FROM OKLAHOMA Senator HARRIS. I want to say on the part of all those involved with this bill that we appreciate your courtesies and helpfulness and also we are grateful for your setting up this hearing. I am accompanied by Andrew Schuman, one of my legislative assistants, who helped with my preparation for this appearance. I want to begin with a brief 3-minute film which is typical of any morning during July on the Pribilof Islands. It has to do with seals. It shows how the seals are herded inland to the killing field, separated by men beating on cans. Apparently five people do all the clubbing and as many as 2,500 seals a day are killed up there on the Pribilofs. (Film shown.) Senator HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, if I told you that our State Department, Commerce Department, and Interior Department were running a handout program at taxpayers' expense for the superrich-the people with fleets of yachts-you and your committee members would be incredulous. If I told you that these Departments were conspiring with commercial interests to destroy our natural heritage for the unnecessary pleasure of a very privileged few, we all would be outraged. Yet this is precisely what I believe is happening. The policy of our Federal Government is to provide full support at taxpayers' expense to those special interests who are slaughtering our ocean mammals so that in generations to come the only way we can see them will be to visit the Smithsonian or some other museum. These agencies are doing this although the people who have the money to purchase a $1,000 sealskin coat or to rent an airplane to hunt down a helpless polar bear clearly do not need these pleasures at taxpayers' expense to lead the good life. People from this Nation and other nations all over the world. have come to realize this. And they have reacted with indignation in an unprecedented flow of letters, to legislators such as ourselves, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, all demanding an end to the killing. I personally have received over 15,000 pieces of correspondence, and I'm sure the members of this distinguished committee recognize the public interest in this matter. Mr. Chairman, last year the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee held hearings on the subject of ocean mammal legislation and reported out a bill euphemistically called the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1971. I use the word "euphemistically," Mr. Chairman, because that bill is a marine mammal protection bill in name only. In reality, it simply puts the official stamp of Government approval on the killing of ocean mammals by allowing the Secretaries of Interior and Commerce to issue permits for the taking of these animals. This is all to be done in the name of management. Mr. Chairman, we have been managing these animals for a long time. And you can see what kind of mess that has gotten us into. It's because of management that we're holding these hearings today. Let's look at where management has brought us. Of all the mammals of the sea, perhaps the most gravely threatened are the great whales. Since the decade between 1930-40, blue whales, the largest and perhaps the most intelligent animals ever to inhabit the earth, have decreased by a factor of about 99 percent. Their worldwide population, which stood at 100,000 about 35 years ago, is now estimated to be between 600 and 3,000, and that is a very liberal estimate, Mr. Chairman. Many respected scientists now predict that these almost legendary animals are on the road to extinction because there simply aren't enough of them to find mates to keep breeding. Finback whales have gone from 400,000 to 100,000-a depletion. of 75 percent. The humpback whale, whose magnificent song we are just now beginning to appreciate, has gone from 100,000 to 2,000. Gray whales now number, at most, 10,000; and the worldwide total of right and bowhead whales is less than 250 each. All of this has been done under the management of the International Whaling Commission. And when legislation was before the House of Representatives this past summer to place a 10-year moratorium on all whaling, the U.S. State Department incredibly opposed this measure on the grounds that to do so would be a rejection of the Commission, that model of management. Polar bears are also in imminent danger of extinction; the species may already, in fact, be doomed. With from 10,000 to 15,000 at most remaining worldwide, at least 1,250 a year are being killed. U.S. trophy hunters are responsible for legally killing about 300 a year in Alaska, a State that prides itself on its excellent management of these animals. The illegal take may amount to a similar figure, although Alaska admits that no reliable statistics are available. What is certain, however, is that the bears killed in Alaska are each year found to be younger, and this is a reliable danger signal that a species is in serious trouble. It is quite likely that the polar bear no longer dens in Alaska, that we have killed all of ours, and that the bears found and shot in Alaska are migrating from the Soviet Union, where they have been completely protected since 1957. When I was in the Soviet Union last April I discussed this matter with the Minister of Interior there and found on their part a great deal of concern that we would continue to kill polar bears and license the killing of them for sports while the Soviet Union had banned the killing. Senator HOLLINGS. Did they say anything about killing whales? Senator HARRIS. Yes, and I want to talk to you about that, too. I have a letter from Averell Harriman addressed to you which I think bears on that. The world's seal population has also declined significantly. The Alaskan fur seal killed by the tens of thousands each year by native employees of the U.S. Commerce Department, has been reduced to 20 percent of its natural size of over 5 million. It is true that the herd has been brought back from the brink of extinction when, in 1911, it numbered only about 200,000. This is no reason, however, to continue the persecution of these animals and keep the herd at a size far smaller than its former numbers. I will return to the international treaty-often cited as a model of management and conservation-that governs the annual harvest of these seals at a later point in my testimony. The harp seals that are killed by the hundreds of thousands each year off Canada have been reduced in the last 25 years by about 80 percent. This year's kill quota was 245,000 seals, most of which were babies killed in the presence of their helpless and terrified mothers. Eminent scientists fear that this overkill of the harp seal is leading toward their extinction. And although U.S. nationals do not participate in this hunt, we are a party to the Internatioanl Convention for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries which provides for the protection and conservation of harp seals. Furthermore, our own Government defends the killing of these baby seals and resists any efforts to stop or reduce the slaughter. In official letters sent out in response to public inquiries, Philip Roedel, head of the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service, describes the Canadian hunt as efficient and humane. The State Department official responsible for oceanic matters, Ambassador Donald McKernan, also defends the killing as being under the strict and proper supervision of the International Convention on North Atlantic Fisheries. And John Larson, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Department, describes these defenseless baby seals as a significant renewable resource which must be harvested when necessary to prevent overpopulation. Yet a study just completed and made public by the Canadian Government states unequivocably that the herd is threatened with extinction and will shortly disappear if the killing continues. The sea otter, whose luxurious pelt is highly prized, has been saved from extinction at the last moment, but it, too, is now becoming a victim of management concepts. Although it is still rare or nonexistent in most of its former range on the Pacific coast, about 40,000 are found in the waters off Alaska. Under the guise of population control, several hundred otters are killed each year and their valuable pelts sold. We must stop this sea otter harvest before commercial pressures build up and the sea otter fur industry is reinstated, and this animal too becomes a victim of management and commercial exploitation. The walrus population in U.S. waters has been seriously depleted, despite the fact that these animals are being managed by the State of Alaska and the Interior Department under the Wildlife Act of 1956. Probably less than a hundred thousand remain, and they are continuing to be killed by commercial hunters, sportsmen seeking trophies, and natives of Alaska at the rate of almost 12,000 a year. It is estimated that half of those killed sink and are lost in the water. Mr. Chairman, the above figures give some indication as to what State and Federal management programs have done for ocean mammals until now. I have heard a lot of talk during the debate on this issue that ocean mammal protection is a subject for objective, scientific management experts; that the well-intentioned but overly emotional and therefore biased proponents of the Harris-Prior bill don't know what they're talking about. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to submit that it is the wildlife managers that are too biased to see this issue clearly. What we are talking about is a management complex that includes the Federal and State bureaucracies, the industries which profit from the killing of ocean mammals, and the hunting lobby. The Federal Government now has three Departments-Commerce, Interior, and State-which are intimately tied to groups with a vested interest in the killing of ocean mammals. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Commerce Department, which has always been interested in the exploitation of a resource, not its protection. Given the fact, for example, that 42 bureaucrats are employed year-round in Seattle and another 50 or so full- or part-time in Washington, D.C., whose salaries are supposed to be paid from the sale of sealskins, it is not difficult to understand why the Department so assiduously pursues the Pribilof seal harvest. The Commerce Department does its job so well, in fact, Mr. Chairman, that it subsidizes the one processor of sealskins in this country, the Fouke Fur Co. The Fouke Fur Co. obviously doesn't want to see the killing of ocean mammals stopped, because it has a profitable arrangement with the Commerce Department and the U.S. taxpayer. We provide the labor to kill the seals, we store the skins, we pay for their transportation from Alaska to South Carolina, we pay for their advertis ing, and the Fouke Fur Co. gets around 50 percent of the gross proceeds of their sale. According to Commerce Department figures, the Fouke Fur Co. has taken in over $12 million in the last 11 years from this operation. I might add, Mr. Chairman, that the figures on page 380 of the House hearings on ocean mammal legislation appear to show almost a half million dollar loss to the United States in 1970 from this same program. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Commerce Department runs the Pribilof fur seal harvest. When Mr. Howard W. Pollock, the Deputy Administrator of NOAA, was asked by Representative Dingell at the House hearings, page 266, where the Department got the authority to advertise sealskins, he replied as follows: "We think we have it under the general authority . . . to the extent that we increase the amount of money that we get into the fund from the sale proceeds... I quote from Mr. Pollock simply to demonstrate the commercial pressure for more and more sealskins which dominates Commerce Department policy towards the Alaskan fur seal. And with this commercial pressure you would think that it would be very difficult for the Commerce Department to exercise any objective, scientific management of the Alaskan fur seal. This is precisely what has happened, because the Commerce Department's thinking is anything but objective. The Department continuously emphasizes that the size of the Pribilof seal herd has risen from 200,000 seals in 1911 to approximately 1.3 million today. They also claim that a larger herd would result in overpopulation and death to many seals from disease and starvation. Our Government's own figures prove these claims to be false. According to an official account, the natural size of the herd is over 5 million, as shown in Encyclopedia Americana, volume 24, pages 480-485, article by Seton Thompson, chief, Division of Alaska Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife. As late as 1948, it numbered about 4 million and was in a quite healthy state. Hence, the size of the herd has decreased-not increased-by a factor of almost 75 percent. Management of the Pribilof fur seal herd has been applied not to allow the herd to reach the greatest population its environment will support, but to keep them at, and I quote Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans: "Their maximum productive level." (Commerce Today, July 26, 1971.) That is the maximum productive level for more sealskins, Mr. Chairman. The need to defend the Pribilof fur seal harvest in the face of criticism has also led Commerce Secretary Stans to state, and I am quoting from the same publication as above, that: "Only surplus bachelor seals are harvested." That is simply not true. First of all, in this once vast herd, now reduced to a fraction of its former size, there are, of course, no surplus seals. Moreover, mother and baby seals are killed by the tens of thousands. According to Victor Scheffer, the Interior Department biol |