Free Sea of Slaughter by Farley Mowat

most primal threat of all: starvation.
    As far back as the late 1960s, a ghastly phenomenon was beginning to exhibit itself at one of the world’s largest surviving puffin colonies, on the island of Røst off the northwest coast of Norway. Although 500,000 chicks were being hatched there every spring, fewer and fewer were living to reach the age of flight. Year by year, the mysterious mortality grew worse until, by 1977, it was estimated that only one chick in 1,000 was surviving. Then a study by Norwegian ornithologists found the solution to the mystery. It was horribly simple. Gross commercial overfishing of herring and other small school-fishes in the northeastern Atlantic had brought about a collapse in their populations, and all the animals that depended on them for sustenance—including larger fish, and seabirds such as the puffin—were being starved. In 1980, almost the entire hatch of puffins on Røst perished of starvation. According to a report written at the time, “They were replaced by millions of [carrion] beetles. Tens of thousands of dried-out puffin chicks littered the colonies like little mummies... the stomachs of the dead chicks were crammed with gravel and earth, a sign of acute starvation.” The tragedy was repeated in the summer of 1981, and most of the puffin chicks hatched that year never found their wings but remained upon the island to rot or mummify.
    The Røst shambles is being repeated in the northwestern Atlantic as a result of the destruction of capelin by the commercial fishing industry. 1 By 1979, the offshore capelin stocks—once the stuff of life for countless other animals inhabiting the approaches to the continent—had been fished into commercial extinction, and the same process of destruction was being applied to the inshore stocks. With the disappearance of the capelin, starvation stalked the seabird colonies, especially those of the Alcidae. The last great puffinry in North America, in Witless Bay, began to suffer savagely. In 1981, fewer than 45 per cent of the chicks hatched there lived to become fledglings, and those that did were so undernourished as to have been unlikely to have survived the rigours of their first winter at sea. This massive starvation probably dates back to 1978 although no one was on the islands then to witness it. There is little doubt that, unless the exploitation of capelin by man is radically curtailed, the puffins, razorbills, murres, and other species of seabirds will be pushed even closer to extinction. Many other kinds of sea animals that are less visible to the human eye, including a score or more of fish species, will also be forced into severe and dangerous decline.
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    1 For further details of this massacre, see the discussion of baitfishes in Chapter 11.
    Unfortunately, those in positions of power in industry and government seem quite content to let the seabirds disappear. Their rationale is simplicity itself. If, and when, the capelin recover from the disastrous destruction of the 1970s and 1980s, few seabirds will remain alive. Therefore there ought to be more capelin available to enhance corporate fishing profits.
    For some decades past, an internecine war has been in progress between the Canadian Wildlife Service and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans over the fate of all animals that can be seen to compete in any way with man for a share of the “harvest of the sea.”
    It is a battle between David and Goliath, but in this case David has neither a lethal sling at his disposal nor the support of the mercenary god of modern times. The CWS does what it can; and Fisheries and Oceans undoes it. If the ultimate decision rests with Fisheries and Oceans, then the once-mighty colonial seabird population of the northeastern seaboard has but small prospects of survival.

3. Swiftwings
    It was known to the Nascopie Indians of Ungava as swiftwings, in recognition of its superlative powers of flight. Other