THE FUB SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 355 



PELAGIC RANGE OF FUK-SEALS FOR FOOD. During the winter solstice between the lapse 

 of the autumnal and the verging of the vernal equinoxes in order to get this enormous food 

 supply, the fur-seals are necessarily obliged to disperse over a very large area of fishing ground, 

 ranging throughout the North Pacific 5,000 miles across between Japan and the Straits of Fuca. 

 In feeding, they are brought to the southward all this time ; and, as they go, they come more and 

 more in contact with those natural enemies peculiar to the sea of these southern latitudes, which 

 are almost strangers and are really unknown to the waters of Bering Sea; for I did not observe, 

 with the exception of ten or twelve perhaps, certainly no more, killer-whales,* a single marine 

 disturbance, or molestation, during the three seasons which I passed upon the islands, that could 

 be regarded in the slightest degree inimical to the peace and life of the Pinnipedia ; and thus, 

 from my own observation, I am led to believe that it is not until they descend well to the south of 

 the Aleutian Islands, and in the North Pacific, that they meet with sharks to any extent, and are 

 diminished by the butchery of killer-whales.t 



The young fur-seals going out to sea for the first time, and following in the wake of their 

 elders, are the clumsy members of the family. When they go to sleep on the surface of the water, 

 they rest much sounder than the others ; and their alert and wary nature, which is handsomely 

 developed ere they are two seasons old, is in its infancy. Hence, I believe that large numbers of 

 them are easily captured by marine foes, as they are stupidly sleeping, or awkwardly fishing. 



BEHAVIOR OF FUR-SEALS IN THE WATERS AROUND THE ISLANDS. In this connection I 

 wish to record an impression very strongly made upon my mind, in regard to their diverse behavior 

 when out at sea, away from the islands, and when congregated thereon. As I have plainly 

 exhibited on a preceding page, they are practically without fear of man when he visits them on 

 the laud of their birth and recreation ; but the same seal that noticed you with quiet indifference 

 at St. Paul, in June and July, and the rest of the season while he was there, or gamboled around 

 your boat when you rowed from the ship to shore, as a dog will play about your horses when you 

 drive from the gate to the house, that same seal, when you meet him in one of the passes of the 



Straits of Fuca, bordering the entire southern, or Pacific, coast of the Aleutian Islands. The aggregate of cod, herring 

 and salmon which the seals find upon these vast icthyological areas of reproduction must be simply enormous, and 

 fully equal (o the most extravagant demand of the voracious appetites of Callorhinii. 



When, however, the fish retire from spawning here, there, and everywhere over these shallows of Alaska and the 

 northwest coast along by the end of September to 1st of November, every year, I believe that the young fur-seal, in 

 following them into the depths of the great Pacific, must have a really arduous struggle for existence unless it knows 

 of lishing banks unknown to us. The yearlings, however, and all above that age, are endowed with sufficient muscular 

 energy to dive rapidly in deep soundings, and to fish with undoubted success. The pup, however, when it goes to sea, 

 five or six months old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling ; it is podgy and fat, a comparative clumsy swimmer, 

 and does not develop, I believe, into a good fisherman until it has become pretty well starved after leaving the Pribylo vs. 

 It sails away from the islands in the wake of. its elder relatives very much as a kettle-bottomed scow trims its course 

 after a graceful and speedy clipper-built ship. 



I must not be understood as saying that fish alone constitutes the diet of the Pribylov pinnipeds; I know that 

 they feed, to a limited extent, upon crustaceans and upon the squid (Loligo), also eating tender algoid sprouts; I 

 believe that the pup-seals live for the first five or six months at sea largely, if not wholly, upon crustaceans and 

 squids ; they are not agile enough, in my opinion, to fish successfully in any great degree, when they first depart from 

 the rookeries. 



But I did observe a very striking exhibition, however, of this character one afternoon while looking over Lu- 

 kannon Bay. I saw a "killer" chasing the alert "holluschickie" out beyond the breakers, when suddenly, in an 

 instant, the cruel cetacean was turned toward the beach in hot pursuit, and in less time than this is read the ugly 

 brute was high and dry upon the sands. The natives were called, and a great feast was in prospect when I left the 

 carcass. 



But this was the only instance of the orca in pursuit of seals that came directly under my observation ; hence, 

 though it does undoubtedly capture a few here every year, yet it is an insignificant cause of destruction, on account 

 of its rarity. 



t In the stomach of one of these animals, year before last, 14 small harp-seals were found. Michael Carroll's Ktporl 

 of Seal and Herring Fisheries of Newfoundland. 



