Through the Eyes of LITTLESEAL: An Interview with Canadian Author Morgan Pumphrey

April 4, 2008

Newfoundland’s Morgan Pumphrey has been against Canada’s commercial seal hunt since she was a child and her mother, Tephi Duffett, whispered into her ear, "I don't like the seal hunt, darling."
 
She has spent most of her life in St. John's, Newfoundland, and over the years has written plays for radio and stage, newspaper and magazine articles, and biographies for a series of “Who's Who” books, which her husband produced. “Frozen Spring,” her first radio play, was appropriately enough about the seal hunt; it aired in the 1970s on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Her most recent project is a children’s book about the seal hunt called LITTLESEAL.

Morgan lives in Quidi Vidi, a  500 year-old fishing village in the capital city of St. John's, with her husband, a writer, who is not against the seal hunt.

Morgan Pumphrey reads from her book.

HSI: Have you always lived in Canada?

Morgan Pumphrey: I have always lived in St. John's, Newfoundland, apart from a year in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada, and a few months in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the east coast.
 
My parents were both Newfoundlanders. My mother worked in a shop, and my father had a desk job with the government.
 
HSI: When did you first learn there was a commercial seal hunt happening in Newfoundland?

MP:  As a child, I grew up knowing that a traditional seal hunt took place here, every spring. At an early age my mother told me that she didn't like the seal hunt because she thought it was cruel. If she mentioned this to other people, no one agreed with her.
 
HSI: What is your position on the commercial seal hunt?

MP: I am against the commercial seal hunt.
 
HSI: Why do you think people continue to hunt seals in Newfoundland?

MP:  Newfoundlanders continue to hunt seals today because they have grown up “going to the ice” with their fathers and uncles and never stopped to question the ethics of the hunt.

Even in St. John's, in the last century, when the fleet of large sealing vessels pulled out of the harbour, people would congregate at the waterfront to cheer them on. The traditional ceremony of “Blessing the Sealers” continues in a downtown church, to this day.

Last year I attended and asked the minister at the coffee afterwards, "Who blesses the quarter of a million seals who are to be killed?"  He had no answer.
 
HSI: How did you come to believe the seal hunt should be ended?

Marcus Gyger

A little seal during the 2008 hunt.

MP:  In my opinion the seal hunt should be ended for two main reasons:
 
1. The seal hunt is no longer necessary for the economic survival of Newfoundland and Labrador. When this colony was discovered and settled by the British 500 years ago, the cod fishery and the seal hunt were crucial to the early settlers. The seal hunt came in March, the hardest month of the year, when the provisions the settlers had stored for the winter were running out. The seals provided food, and their pelts could be sold or traded with the local merchant. Even up until l949, times were hard in Newfoundland, which, incidentally, is Britain's first overseas possession.

However, in l949 everything changed. Confederation with Canada brought prosperity. There were allowances for children (called the Baby Bonus), plus social welfare and pensions for widows and seniors. We were all looked after.

Today, the income from the seal hunt is minimal. It represents a small part of the fishermen's annual income and less than one-half of one percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

2. The seal hunt should be ended because it is unnecessarily cruel. I was recently talking to a man who went to The Front with Ray Elliott, off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland.

Mr. Elliott was the first local sealer to make public claims of cruelty during the hunt, in the early 80s. He described the traditional method of killing seals from the long liners: "When a patch of seals are found on the ice, the hunter hops over the side of the boat with his gaff, and hits the seals in the face and head, to knock them out. Then he starts skinning. If he's dealing with a half dozen seals, by the time he gets to the last couple they are regaining consciousness, and are skinned alive."

Elliot was later ostracized by his fellow Newfoundlanders and incarcerated.

Today the large liners and sealing vessels have been replaced by smaller, open boats, from which the seals are shot. This “more humane” method of slaughter results in some shot seals slipping under the ice to drown, or slowly bleeding to death from their wounds.

The use of the hakapik to kill seals and gather pelts only adds to their suffering. There are videotapes of sealers hooking a live seal with this instrument and dragging him across the ice.

Another factor in the cruelty of the seal hunt is a lack of adequate supervision. It is impossible for the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans to properly monitor the hunt and regulate it effectively because the annual seal hunt involves thousand of sealers hunting over hundreds of square miles of ice and water. The DFO simply doesn't have the manpower or boats and aircraft required.

Kathy Milani/The HSUS

Clubbing during the 2008 hunt.

HSI: Is LITTLESEAL your first book or have you written others? If so, what were they about?

MP: The only other book I wrote was a Who's Who on Women in Newfoundland. It was the first book of this kind to be written on women in this area.
 
HSI: Why do you think your book is a good way to educate the public about the seal hunt?

MP: In Newfoundland and Labrador, the seal is considered a “fish with fur” and the seal hunt is still referred to as the “seal fishery.” LITTLESEAL shows that a seal is more than a pelt with a price tag on his head; a seal is an intelligent mammal who thinks, feels, and has a will to live.

HSI: There seems to have been some controversy regarding LITTLESEAL—could you explain the situation?

MP:  The controversy regarding the marketing of LITTLESEAL arose when I looked for a distributor to supply the book to bookstores, retail outlets and magazine racks province-wide. The representative for the only distributor in the province told me that they couldn't handle my book because the family who owned the company had connections with the seal hunt. The only way that I could sell the book across Newfoundland and Labrador would be to put it in the trunk of my car and “hit the road” myself.

This action was regarded as “censorship” by the media. I was interviewed by the national press and the story went across Canada in late November 2007.

As I write this, LITTLESEAL is only for sale in one bookstore and one gift store in St. John's, and nowhere else in the province.
 
HSI: Are other Newfoundlanders opposed to the seal hunt?

MP:  Since LITTLESEAL was published, a few local people have approached or called me with words of encouragement. However, I would estimate that about 95 percent of the local population unquestioningly supports the hunt. The fact the main distributor in the province would not take the book, and only two of the multitude of bookstores in the capital would stock it, typifies this attitude.
 
HSI: What do you think people in outports [the coastal communities of Newfoundland and Labrador] should do rather than hunt seals?

MP: Instead of spending millions of taxpayers’ dollars promoting the seal hunt tough tax breaks, subsidizing research into new seal products, and upgrading seal processing plants, the federal government could put this money into re-educating sealers for alternative employment as happened in the early 1990s, when the cod moratorium was established and fishermen had to find other ways to make a living.

Interestingly, many outports are dying as young people head to St. John's area for employment, or go for the “big bucks” in the Alberta oilfields. Many of the smaller settlements are mainly a home for seniors.

Marcus Gyger

Without defence.

HSI: Do you think seals caused the fish stocks to collapse?

MP: The collapse of the cod fishery was caused by mismanagement of the stocks and overfishing by Newfoundlanders, Canadians, and foreign fishing vessels, according to scientists with Canada's DFO. In fact, scientific surveys show that harp seals have only 3 percent cod fish in their diet and eat a variety of other species, some of which prey on cod.
 
HSI: Do you think seals are overpopulated?

MP:  Seals are definitely NOT OVERPOPULATED. As a matter of fact, if there is no change in government policy, seals could be in trouble. Because 98 percent of the seals slaughtered are newborn, they don't reach sexual maturity at five or six years of age and therefore don't breed. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this is the beginning of a downward slide. First the fish; then the seals!  Even the DFO has recently recorded that the number of harp seal pups born is starting to decrease yearly.

Couple this with the government's disregard for what the scientists call a "sustainable yield," plus the negative effects of global warming, as were evident in 2002 when 75 percent of the Gulf of St. Lawrence pups perished because of thin ice, and you have a definite recipe for disaster.
 
HSI: You know that the Fisheries Minister, Loyola Hearn, is from Newfoundland, and that he manages the seal hunt. If you had a message for him, as a Newfoundlander, what would it be?

MP:  I would say to the Hon. Loyola Hearn, Fisheries Minister, that it is time to consider options to a seal hunt that is cruel and outdated. The largest wholesale slaughter of wildlife on the planet, which takes place largely on the shores of our province, is a disgrace to Newfoundland and Labrador and an embarrassment to Canada.

Stop the seal hunt. It is no longer appropriate in the Global Village. With all the money Newfoundland is making from the offshore oil, close the hunt and compensate the sealers, as was done with the fishermen for the cod moratorium. The federal government can take the millions they put into the hunt every year and pay the sealers to stay home. 

If you would like to know more about LITTLESEAL or would like to order your own copy, visit http://littleseal.wordpress.com or contact Morgan Pumphrey at mopumphrey@yahoo.com.