time, place, and manner by fixing a zone of around the Pribilof Islands within which the seals were not to be molested at any time, and from May 1 to July 31 each year they were not to be pursued anywhere in Bering Sea. Only licensed sailing vessels were permitted to engage in fur sealing, and the use of firearms or explosives was prohibited. This marked the first attempt at establishing regulations on the sealing industry for environmental purposes. However, these regulations failed because the mother seals fed outside the protected area and remained vulnerable. A joint commission of scientists from Britain and the United States further considered the problem, and came to the conclusion that the pelagic sealing needed to be curtailed. However further joint tribunals did not enact new legal restrictions, and then Japan also embarked upon pelagic sealing. Finally, the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention severely curtailed the sealing industry. Signed on July 7, 1911, by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia, the treaty was designed to manage the commercial harvest of fur bearing mammals. It outlawed open-water seal hunting and acknowledged the United States' jurisdiction in managing the on-shore hunting of seals for commercial purposes. It was the first international treaty to address wildlife preservation issues. The treaty was dissolved with the onset of hostilities between the signatories in World War II. However, the treaty set precedent for future national and international laws and treaties, including the Fur Seal Act of 1966 and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Today, commercial sealing is conducted by only five nations: Canada, Greenland, Namibia, Norway, and Russia. The United States, which had been heavily involved in the sealing industry, now maintains a complete ban on the commercial hunting of marine mammals, with the exception of indigenous peoples who are allowed to hunt a small number of seals each year. Equipment and method In the Canadian commercial seal hunt, the majority of the hunters initiate the kill using a firearm. Ninety percent of sealers on the ice floes of the Front (east of Newfoundland), where the majority of non-native seal hunting occurs, use firearms. An older and more traditional method of killing seals is with a hakapik: a heavy wooden club with a hammer head and metal hook on the end. The hakapik is used because of its efficiency; the animal can be killed quickly without damage