Death on the high seas
 
Seabirds off Canada’s east cost are over-hunted and killed by illegally waste dumping by passing ships. Published: Time magazine Canada, “Notebook,” May 30, 2005 Byline: Deborah Jones For decades, vessels plying the Atlantic shipping lanes between North America and Europe have used Canada as a dumping ground, emptying their bilges off Newfoundland's coast as they steam by, leaving behind oily slicks that condemn at least 300,000 seabirds a year to slow, agonizing deaths. Armed with recent legislation and new technology, Canada is trying to crack down on oceangoing polluters. Wildlife experts say heavy fines authorized by the Senate in May, which start at C$500,000 and reach more than C$1 million for some offenses, should deter most captains from fouling the seas. Also, the legislation extends Canada's enforcement range from 12 miles to 200 miles off its coasts. And if that isn't enough, satellites and "fingerprinting" will make it easier to nail culprits. The sickening spectacle of dying murres, ducks, dovekies, puffins and shearwaters has long been an annual occurrence in the rich waters off Newfoundland, winter home to millions of birds that migrate from Arctic nesting grounds. A drop of oil the size of a quarter can demolish the intricate weave of a seabird's waterproof feathers, letting in frigid water and poisoning the creature as it desperately preens itself. Within three days, scientists say, most oiled birds die of hypothermia. Of some 6,000 large ships that ply the sea lanes annually, only a few fail to comply with international laws against dumping, says Steve Wendt of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Violators have exploited the fact that it was worth the risk to dump off Canada when the fine was C$25,000 rather than fork out C$2,000 to C$6,000 in each port to have their ships' bilges pumped. The problem is worldwide, but it's particularly awful where massive bird populations and crowded sea lanes meet off Atlantic Canada, says Josh Laughren of the World Wildlife Fund. "It's the perfect storm of circumstances." Ships dump mostly at night or in bad weather, when they're invisible to air and water patrols. A pilot project under way uses satellite radar, which shows oil slicks as flat areas on the turbulent waters, to enable patrols to identify dumps and link them to passing ships. Samples from a slick would be compared with the bilge contents of suspect ships by analyzing the molecular weight of hydrocarbons. If there's a match, they're busted. Copyright Deborah Jones 2005 Easy to kill Once family fare in outports, turres now are shot and sold illegally by truckloads. Opponents fear to speak up Published: The Globe and Mail, Januargy 22, 1992 DEBORAH JONES, Halifax NS HARD times and good weather have contributed to a record number of turres killed this winter in Newfoundland, where the seabird hunt is allowed by a loophole in international law that Canada and the United States want plugged. Turres are diving birds that weigh about one kilogram and look like small penguins. Outside of Newfoundland, they are known as thick-billed murres. "There's been a wholesale slaughter of birds" in November and December, said John Chardine, a seabird biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service. "About 100,000 birds were killed in one month's time." The birds are sold illegally across Canada to homesick Newfoundlanders, he said. "We think truckloads of turres are going to major centres in Newfoundland and even off the island to places like Ontario and west of there." In Newfoundland outports, turres are traditional table fare, so attempts to curb the unregulated kill are controversial. "Nowadays, people have moved away from the outports but want to maintain contact with the old ways," said Wayne Turpin, senior enforcement co-ordinator for Newfoundland and Labrador with the Canadian Wildlife Service. "They think, 'A turre dinner on Sunday, boy that would be nice to do again.' " Turres winter near fish stocks on the Grand Banks and nest each summer in the Arctic. Scientists believe there are between four and five million of them, and hunters kill as many as 700,000 a year. This year, Dr. Chardine said, winds have blown an unusually high number close to shore and hunters' guns. Because coastal Newfoundland's fishing industry is in such bad shape, hunting and selling turres appeals to fishermen desperate to pay bills and feed their families. Government scientists say the hunt is endangering the black and white birds, relatives of the extinct great auk, which hunters had exterminated by 1844. At least one Canadian Arctic colony has been reduced and several Greenland colonies have been wiped out or reduced, partly because of hunting. Many Newfoundlanders fear that government and environmental groups will destroy the turre hunt as surely as they curbed seal hunting a decade ago. A turre is easier to kill than the proverbial sitting duck. "They flock together," Mr. Turpin said. "There'll be maybe 30 or 40 sitting on the water and a boat will steam up to them, slowly inch forward with one or two hunters in the head of the boat. The birds will start to go to wing, and the hunters start shooting. Sometimes the boat gets almost up beside the birds before they go to wing." While turre suppers have been a Sunday tradition for generations of Newfoundlanders, the hunt has changed in recent decades. Hunters used to wait for good weather to venture out in wooden boats. Using heavy muskets, they would shoot a dozen turres as part of the family's winter food supply. Today, hunters skim across icy waters in glass fibre boats. With high-powered rifles they easily shoot hundreds of birds in an afternoon. They gut and freeze them for later sale, earning thousands of dollars for a few days' work. There's no law against killing turres, but selling them is illegal, Mr. Turpin said. Officials believe only a few people in each community are killing birds for sale. But Dr. Chardine said catching the offenders is "extremely difficult because people have been sensitized to our enforcement efforts and are extremely unwilling to sell birds to people working under cover." Mr. Turpin said some people who hunt turres for food worry about over- hunting and have started petitions in favour of regulation. However, one petitioner contacted refused to discuss the issue with a reporter because his neighbours would object. Mr. Turpin said people tip officers about turre sellers. But "when we're unable to apprehend them, we lose the support of all those people, especially when they see their neighbours making $15,000 to $20,000." Part of the problem is that the maximum penalty is only $300 under the Migratory Birds Convention Act and "a person could make that in a half hour," Mr. Turpin said. He hopes the government will increase the penalty this spring after years of delays. "There's always the Constitution, the Oka crisis. There always seems to be something that bumps it off the agenda." A tougher penalty would help, but officials say the answer is to change the 1916 Migratory Birds Convention between Canada and the United States. When the convention was drafted, Newfoundland was not part of Canada. Because people elsewhere did not hunt turres, the convention did not list them as game birds. After Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, Newfoundlanders objected vehemently to a ban on turre hunting. So Ottawa passed unilateral legislation allowing the hunt, a move experts say may be illegal under the convention. Throughout the 1980s, Canadian and U.S. officials talked about amending the convention to regulate hunting of the birds. But last year, the United States decided to wait until another issue - allowing native hunting of migratory birds - could be included in the complex negotiations. In the meantime, wildlife officers are trying to educate hunters about the birds. Turres don't reproduce until age five and lay only one egg a year. They can live as long as 40 years. Copyright Deborah Jones 1992 Newfoundland hunters could wipe out seabirds Published: The Globe and Mail, February 3, 1990, FOCUS BY DEBORAH JONES, HALIFAX 'HAVE YOU GOT any turres?'' the caller asks a Halifax shopkeeper who specializes in country food from rural Newfoundland. The request raises the ire of the shopkeeper, who can fill any orders for turres and is incensed about ''stupid'' government regulations prohibiting the sale of the small penguin-like seabirds. For many Newfoundlanders, turres are delectable table fare that they have a centuries-old right to hunt. The right is exercised diligently: biologists estimate between 500,000 and 750,000 turres are shot annually, and the discreet sale of fresh and canned turres is common as well as illegal in the province. ''It's a very significant harvest,'' said Ian Goudie, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in St. John's. ''It exceeds the total Canadian harvest of geese.'' To biologists the birds are not turres at all but thick-billed murres, with an estimated population of four to six million that is in danger of being wiped out. They are being killed by hunters, by pollution and by becoming entangled in fishing nets. Some opponents of the hunt say the danger is increasing with the decline of the fishery, as fishermen have more time and a greater need to hunt. Thick-billed murres, which are about the size of Cornish game hens, winter in waters off Newfoundland's rocky coast and summer in the Eastern Arctic and Greenland, coming to land only to nest. In nature, said biologist Dick Brown at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S., murres have few enemies and can live up to 40 years. They do not begin breeding until about age 5; then they lay just one egg a year. Both parents care for their offspring before and after hatching. Biologists say their breeding pattern makes the species much less resilient than ducks, for example, which lay several eggs at a time. Recent studies have not shown a decline in Canadian Arctic summer colonies of the murres that winter in Newfoundland, Mr. Goudie said. But comparisons to sketchy data from Arctic studies in the early fifties ''indicate some of those colonies have declined by 20 to 30 per cent.'' Only in Newfoundland are Canadian murres shot legally, and in effect the hunt is unregulated. It is a practice allowed by a strange legal twist on a 74-year-old convention on migratory birds between Canada and the United States. Turre hunting is about as old as Newfoundland, and when Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949 no one considered that the staunch turre- hunting tradition would become illegal under the long-standing international 1916 Migratory Bird Convention. ''It started quite a heated turmoil,'' Mr. Goudie recalled. Ottawa dealt with the issue by passing regulations in 1956 allowing Newfoundlanders to hunt turres for their own food, but not for sale. ''It was very obscure legal wheeling and dealing,'' said George Finney, Atlantic region director of the Canadian Wildlife Service in Sackville, N.B. When Ottawa made the change Washington ''kind of blinked, is the best way to put it.'' When the international bird convention was drawn up by Ottawa and Washington, game and non-game birds were strictly defined. Thick-billed murres were not considered fair game in what was then Canada, and they are not found in most of the United States. ''The game species of Newfoundland were not the same game species as the rest of North America,'' Mr. Finney explained. Turres or murres are still not considered game birds under the convention. Consequently there is no bag limit on the number a hunter can take between fall and spring, and permits are not needed to hunt them. For years after the turre hunt was made legal in 1956, Mr. Finney said, ''people rowed offshore in wood dories with a single-shot gun to hunt them.'' But technology soon ruffled the arrangement. Outboard motors on boats and shotguns made turre hunting easy. ''There's nothing to prevent hunters from taking 100 to 200 a day,'' Mr. Goudie said. ''I've seen boats come in to shore with 250 birds a day, and knew the same individual would go out again the next day. You know these birds are not being kept for their own consumption. Fishermen are supplementing their income, and they have unlimited recreational time. If they're able to recover their costs of shells and gasoline . . . a lot of them conspire to do so.'' ''With us in the wildlife service, our point of view is you're killing off the species,'' Mr. Brown said from his Dartmouth office. In an effort to impose bag limits and permits on the Newfoundland murre hunt, Mr. Finney said officials from the Canadian Wildlife Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will meet within two months to discuss how the turres can be designated in the 1916 convention as game birds subject to rigid controls. The prospect of opening the landmark convention, considered sacred among environmentalists, makes some people shudder almost as much as the hunt does. Changing the act may not be as simple as it seems, Mr. Goudie said. The convention "is looked at worldwide as one of best pieces of legislation governing migratory birds in the world across international boundaries. A lot of the feeling is if the convention is reopened for negotiation, it would never be closed again. It really has remained unchanged since 1916.'' Some environmentalists see curbing the hunt as urgent because of chronic oil pollution off Newfoundland. This month alone biologists say more than 18,000 seabirds have been oiled - and are dead or dying slow deaths - from careless dumping of oil, mainly from international ships passing the province on the North Atlantic shipping lane. ''It's a bit of an anomaly that we're concerned with reports of thousands of birds killed by oil and we have estimates of hundreds of thousands shot in what is an uncontrolled hunt,'' said biologist Pierre Ryan, head of the volunteer Avalon Conservation Group. ''A reason why I've had a big concern about oil pollution is you can't really expect to get all the support of the people who hunt turres in acting responsibly, unless you are seen to be acting to reduce an (oil) problem which I think is as significant as the turre hunt,'' Mr. Ryan said. Copyright Deborah Jones 1990 About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted. Please contact me for reprint rights. All material copyrighted ../About.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
Pollution and people threaten seabirds
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