page_title: Seal hunting
section_title: Industrial era
hierarchical_section_title: Seal hunting / History / Industrial era
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy survey ship USS Bear (AG-29) pictured in Antarctic waters during operations with the U.S. Antarctic Service. Note the aircraft on the ship. "One of two ships that supported the 1933-1935 Byrd Antarctic Expedition, Bear was built in Scotland in 1874, and purchased by the U.S. Navy ten years later specifically for use in the rescue of members of the Greeley expedition in the Arctic. Along with another ship, Thetis, she rescued six survivors on 23 June 1884. Transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service (later U.S. Coast Guard), she served until 1929, making 34 voyages to Alaskan and Arctic waters. She was sold to the City of Oakland, California, in 1929 for use as a museum. After participating in the Byrd expedition of 1933-1935, during which she was known by the name Bear of Oakland, the ship was repurchased by the Navy in 1939. Commissioned as Bear (AG 29), she made two voyages to the Antarctic as part of the U.S. Antarctic Service and subsequently operated with the Northeast Greenland Patrol until decommisioned in 1944." (NMNA)
context_page_description: Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. Seal hunting is currently practiced in ten countries: United States, Canada, Namibia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Most of the world's seal hunting takes place in Canada and Greenland.
  The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans regulates the seal hunt in Canada. It sets quotas, monitors the hunt, studies the seal population, works with the Canadian Sealers' Association to train sealers on new regulations, and promotes sealing through its website and spokespeople. The DFO set harvest quotas of over 90,000 seals in 2007; 275,000 in 2008; 280,000 in 2009; and 330,000 in 2010. The actual kills in recent years have been less than the quotas: 82,800 in 2007; 217,800 in 2008; 72,400 in 2009; and 67,000 in 2010. In 2007, Norway claimed that 29,000 harp seals were killed, Russia claimed that 5,479 seals were killed and Greenland claimed that 90,000 seals were killed in their respective seal hunts.
context_section_description: Growing from the international Grand Banks fishery, the Newfoundland hunt initially used small schooners. Kill rates averaged 451,000 in the 1830s, and rose to 546,000 annually during the first half of the next decade, which led to a marked decline in the harp seal population that in turn adversely impacted profits in the sealing industry.
  Sealing reached its peak in Newfoundland in the 1860s, with the introduction of more powerful and reliable steamships that were capable of much larger range and storing capacity. Annual catches exceeded the 400,000 mark from the 1870s and smaller sealers were steadily pushed out of the market.
  The first modern sealing ship was the SS Bear, built in Dundee, Scotland in 1874 as a steamer for sealing. The ship was custom-built for sealing out of St. John's, Newfoundland, and was the most outstanding sealing vessel of her day and the lead ship in a new generation of sealers. Heavy-built with six inch (15.2 cm) thick wooden planks, Bear was rigged as a sailing barquentine but her main power was a steam engine designed to smash deep into ice packs to reach seal herds.
  At the time of her arrival in St. John's, there were 300 vessels outfitted each season to hunt seals, but most were small schooners or old sailing barques. The new sealing ships represented by Bear radically transformed the Eastern North Atlantic seal fishery as they replaced the hundreds of smaller sealing vessels owned by merchants in outports around Newfoundland with large and expensive steamships owned by large British and Newfoundland companies based in St. John's. Owned at first by the Scottish firm W. Grieve and Sons, she was acquired in 1880 by R. Steele Junior.
  Another famous sealing ship of the era was the Terra Nova, originally built in 1884 for the Dundee whaling and sealing fleet. She was ideally suited to the polar regions and worked for 10 years in the annual seal fishery in the Labrador Sea. Large and expensive ships required major capital investments from British and Newfoundland firms, and shifted the industry from merchants in small outports to companies based in St. John's, Newfoundland. By the late 19th century, the sealing industry in Newfoundland was second in importance only to cod fishing.
  The seal hunt provided critical winter wages for fishermen, but was dangerous work marked by sealing disasters that claimed hundreds of lives, such as the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster involving the SS Southern Cross, the SS Newfoundland, and SS Stephano. The rugged hulls and experienced crews of Newfoundland sealing vessels often led sealers such as Bear and Terra Nova to be hired for arctic exploration and one sealer Algerine was hired to recover Titanic bodies in 1912. After World War II, the Newfoundland hunt was dominated by large Norwegian sealing vessels until the late 20th century, when the much diminished hunt shifted to smaller motor fishing vessels, based from outports around Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2007, the commercial seal hunt dividend contributed about $6 million to the Newfoundland GDP, a fraction of the industry's former importance.
caption: The SS Bear began sealing operations in the 1870s and radically transformed the industry.
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