Sea of Slaughter by Farley Mowat Page A

then the fishermen bring about an internecine war by stirring them up with a stick. The birds evidently imagine their comrades are avowed enemies and, pitching into their neighbours, a general fight and terrible commotion ensues while the feathers fly in all directions, much to the amusement of the men. The fishermen also sometimes tie two together by the legs which enables the birds to swim, but keeps them in unpleasant contact, the consequence being that they fight until one or both succumb.”
    Shearwaters and fulmars were still being slaughtered for bait by Newfoundland fishermen as late as 1949.
    Not even the small, robin-sized petrels (also called Mother Carey’s chickens) were immune. “The most common and effective way of killing them was with a whip which was made by tying several parts of codline to a staff five or six feet in length. The petrels were tolled by throwing out a large piece of codfish liver and when they had gathered in a dense mass, swish went the thongs of the whip cutting their way through the crowded flock and killing or maiming a score or more at a single sweep. The cruel work went on until maybe 400 or 500 were killed.”
    Although adult seabirds were preferred because their flesh held together better on the hook, the available supply seldom came close to meeting the demand. So the young were butchered too. On some rookeries, in some seasons, hardly a young bird reached maturity. A fisherman from Bonavista Bay in Newfoundland once described to me a bait raid in which he took part.
    â€œ ’Twas late in June-month and the young turrs [murres] was well growed. We was seven men and a half-a-dozen youngsters in two trap boats, and we had gob sticks with iron heads onto them. We come up to the rock just after sunrise and went right off to work. Everywhere you walked the young turrs was thick as hair on a dog. Ticklasses [kittiwakes] and old turrs was overhead in thousands and thousands and the stink when the sun come up was like to choke a shark. Well, we set to, and it was whack-whack-whack until me arms got that tired I could hardly swing me stick. I was nigh covered-up with blood and gurry and the slime they hove up when they was hit. Fast as we knocked ’em over, the young lads hauled them off to the boats in brin bags. She was only a little bit of an island, so it didn’t take we all day to clean her up. And I don’t say as how what we left behind was enough to make a good scoff for a fox. Them boats was built to carry fifty quintal [about two-and-a-half tons] and they was well loaded. Enough bait so as every boat in the cove could fish free and easy for a fortnight afterwards.”
    Here now is a look at the status of some of the major threatened seabird species of the northeastern seaboard of America.
    Often called Mother Carey’s chicks, or sea swallows, the little storm petrels are the disembodied wraiths of the ocean, riding the vortex of wind and water far at sea except for the brief interval when they come ashore to reproduce. They breed in shallow burrows they excavate in sod or soil and in crevices amongst the rocks, flying to and from their rookeries only in darkness. So secretive are they that one can walk across a turf-clad clifftop honeycombed with their burrows and be unaware that hundreds and thousands of them lie quiet underneath one’s feet. Leach’s storm petrel once bred in enormous numbers on islands and headlands south at least to Cape Cod, but the encroachments of modern man and his associated animals have deprived them of most of their one-time rookeries, except in Newfoundland. According to Dr. David Nettleship of the Canadian Wildlife Service, the population status is uncertain in Newfoundland and Labrador but still declining elsewhere in eastern Canada and New England.
    The magnificent northern gannet, with its white plumage and black-tipped wings spanning nearly six feet, was once one of the most spectacular seabirds of the