PIRATICAL SEALERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8187, 31 July 1912, Page 4

PIRATICAL SEALERS.

NEW ZEALAND GROUNDS DEPLETED. DEMAND FOB AN ARMED PATBOH VESSEL. SPECIAL TO THE "TIIIES.” CHRISTCHURCH, July:- 80. “I can assure you,’’ said a proViiuon. Bluff ex-sealer, “that ilHcic sealing is being carried on in southern Now Zealand waters on a by no means gmnli scale by foreigners. For almost twenty years the New Zealand Government hat had the sealing grounds closed for the protection of seals, with the sole result that they have been preserved for tbv depredations of foreigners. That is the position in a nutshell. No effort ha* been made by the Government to interfere with the barefaced robbery that ha* been going on for' years and is still going on. I can assure you that tu& amount of poaching done during recent months has exceeded past records. Th« Snares (south of Stewart Island) have been depleted, and oven the reefs visit' ed.

The grounds have been, visited annually bv strange vessels from Nova Scotia, the United States,. Norway, and other nations from which vessels sail on an indefinite cruise and return with cargoes of seal skins from the southern seas, No information is given to the sealskin buyers, and no questions are asked, and so the depletion goes on.

The point that hurts the old sealers at the Bluff—and they are many—is that they are forbidden by law to seal at all, while foreigners are not prevented from robbing tho grounds. A. gunboat is sadly required. That the fur seal required protection twenty years ago there was not tho slightest doubt; but the trouble is that the protection was novel enforced eo far as foreigners were con. corned.